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PULPIT AND PLATFORM 



SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 



BY 



REV. O. H. TIFFANY, D.D., LL.D, 





NEW YORK : HUNT & EATON 

CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & CURTS 

1893 



THE LIb*A*y| 
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Copyright, 1893, by 
HUNT & E A T N , 

New Yokk. 



Ciectrotyped, printed, and bound by 

HUNT & EATON, 

150 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



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IN WHOSE SERVICE MY HUSBAND SPENT SO MANY DELIGHTFUL YEARS, 
AND TO WHOM HE MINISTERED IN 

"THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD," 

I GRATEFULLY 

DEDICATE THIS VOLUME. 

ELIZA B. TIFFANY. 



Brooklyn, N. Y., zSgj. 



EDITOR'S NOTE. 



The honor and responsibility of selecting for publication and 
conducting through the press a few of Dr. Tiffany's sermons 
and lectures have been conferred on me, and I am grateful 
for the privilege of being thus identified with one whose name 
and ministry are known throughout Methodism. 

It was my purpose to arrange the sermons in the order of 
the church year, an arrangement that would have been in 
harmony with Dr. Tiffany's general plan of preaching, but as 
many of his special discourses were not written out in full I 
had to adopt another course. 

Concerning the selections made, it is but just to say that 
my thought has been to present something of the variety and 
character of Dr. Tiffany's ministry. I fervently hope that in 
some degree, at least, this result has been secured. 

J. Wesley Johnston. 

St. Johns Parsonage, Brooklyn, X. Y. 



CONTENTS. 



I. SERMONS. 

PAGE 

Oratory. Acts xxvi, i 13 

The Preparation in Study. Neh. viii, 8 28 

The Cross. Isa. vi, 14 39 

John's Question and Christ's Answer. Matt, xi, 2-4. . . 54 

Thanksgiving. Psalm cxlvii, 20 67 

Christmas. Rev. xxii, 16 86 

The New Birth. John iii, 17 . 98 

The Things which are C/esar's. Matt, xxii, 21 , . 113 

The Silence of Christ. Matt, xxvii, 12-14 • 128 

Jacob's Vision. Gen. xxviii, 11 140 

One God in Nature and in Grace. Matt, ix, 5 ; Mark 

ii, 9 ; Luke v, 23 153 

A Woman's Influence. Ruth i, 19 169 

ii. addresses. 

Abraham Lincoln 183 

Personal Memories of U. S. Grant. 202 

American National Character as Affected by Immi- 
gration 212 

The Yosemite Valley 227 



INTRODUCTION. 



Who that has heard the voice of the noble Tiffany, or be- 
held his movement in the pulpit and on the platform, or felt 
the throbbing of his great heart will not be glad that a volume 
of his spoken words is to become the world's treasure? In 
his coronation the American pulpit parted with one of its best 
workers. He belonged to the front rank of men to whose 
heart and lips was confided the Great Message. Now that 
he is translated his name and fame are an inheritance both 
rich and permanent. In manner he was royal. He came to 
his dignity alike by ancestry and training. Then, what he 
said proved his lofty conception of his holy office and the 
majesty of Him who had commissioned the messenger. He 
kept loyally within the lines of his greatest fitness. What he 
did, therefore, was the achievement of a master. 

This marvelous man I came to know when he was a young 
and brilliant professor in Dickinson College. His uniform 
kindness, his tenderness and sacrifice during the long and 
dangerous illness of a boy without claim upon him, and 
the sweetness with which his goodness was always manifested 
have lived on through the years. The world is still stub- 
bornly lonely without him. One wonders why the grasp of 
his hand comes not again. 

This volume of Sermons and Addresses, strong and noble 
as they are, convey but a faint idea of the luxuriance of the 
man's genius and the rich harvest of his life. He was superb 
in all his ways. As to his voice, where shall we go to hear 



io Introduction. 

its equal ? Of the grandeur of the preacher's mission he was 
fully conscious. In measuring his own powers he was modest 
beyond words. Once, being asked to deliver a course of lec- 
tures on the Delivery of Sermons, he outrightly declined, 
saying that he had not the capacity to teach the art. I re- 
minded him of himself, but received no assuring answer. In 
substance he said, " That may be as you say, but I do not 
know how to teach what would be expected of me." 

These Sermons and Addresses have been gathered from 
the large accumulations of a brilliant and useful ministerial 
career. They are worthy of the man, of his Church, of his 
many friends, and of a place on the table of all, laymen and 
preachers. They who read will say, Why is the volume not 
double its present size? But no volume can convey the 
charm of the preacher's wonderful presence or superb man- 
ner. Yet this does bear to us on every page the clear proof 
of the tropical splendor of his genius, the breadth of his great 
heart, and the real depth of his spiritual life. 

John F. Hurst. 

Washington, D. C, Jane 17, 1893. 



SERMONS. 



ORATORY. 

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for thy- 
self. Then Paul stretched forth the hand, and answered for himself. — 
Acts xxvi, I. 

I HAVE always esteemed the address which Paul made 
on this occasion as a masterpiece of oratory. The man, 
the subject, the occasion all conspired to make it so. 

THE MAN. 

Paul has occupied no mean position, but been conspicu- 
ous in the heated controversies, both religious and politi- 
cal, which have agitated the nation and are yet to con- 
vulse the world. 

Though of logical habit he was of a fiery and impetu- 
ous temperament. Naturally proceeding from argument 
to blows, condemning the new religion he persecuted 
those who held it. Convinced of error he endured per- 
secution for the truth's sake, and his life had been full 
of calamitous adventure, marvelous enterprise, and heroic 
endurance. In the midst of it all he bore himself 
courageously, and with a sublime self-abnegation which 
never forsook him, and always made him master of the 
situation. In his youth he had borne himself impetu- 
ously as against opponents, humbly as against those who 
doubted his sincerity. 

He was now well advanced in years, but had lost none 
of the vigor of intellect, or clearness of utterance, or 
force of character which had heretofore made him a 
formidable antagonist to caviling Jew and skeptical 



14 Pulpit and Platform. 

philosopher. True, he is in bonds, a prisoner, yet he 
does not hesitate to " stretch forth " the fettered hand, 
for he realizes that " he is a freeman whom the truth 
makes free." " These bonds," to which he so feelingly 
alludes, are but the harmless and impotent expression of 
erring human authority and power, unlawfully placed 
upon his person, for he is a Roman citizen ; yet he is 
conscious of a higher patent of nobility, for he is the 
authorized herald and ambassador of the Sovereign of the 
universe, empowered to arraign even kings and direct 
their submission in all loyalty to his Sovereign. As he 
warms in his discourse he even exalts himself (though 
he does it in all meekness) above his judge, and says, " I 
would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear 
me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, 
except these bonds," and he implies with a conscious cer- 
tainty of conviction that the king may soar from his throne 
to the dignity of the accused man speaking before him. 

THE SUBJECT. 

He is on his defense against an accusation by his own 
nation. He must attempt the delicate and difficult task 
of personal vindication, and though he feels perfectly 
conscious of rectitude, and knows the charge to be both 
frivolous and unjust, he must make this to appear with- 
out offense to the magistrate by whom he has been held 
in durance. He must detail his personal history and ex- 
periences, but must not allow himself to indulge in garru- 
lous and self-complacent boasting, that pitfall for egotis- 
tical assumption. He and his convictions, his cherished 
religious hopes, his deep-seated theological opinions, are 
the subject of investigation and inquiry ; he is accused 
and speaks in his own defense. He stands before royalty 



Oratory. 15 

as a criminal, undaunted and brave. Neither the anath- 
emas of his own countrymen nor the scowl of the world 
could crush that spirit of his, which rose in triumph over 
all. He was in chains, and yet no man more free than 
he ; his spirit exulted in a liberty which no despot could 
injure, no time destroy. An outcast in the world was 
he, and yet its rulers trembled at the majesty of his looks 
and the power of his words. 

THE AUDIENCE. 

The assembly is a notable one. There is Festus, 
who has entertained his appeal to Caesar ; there is Herod, 
the grandson of Herod the Great, who by the favor of 
Claudius Caesar has been made King of Chalcis, a man 
who was at one time a zealous Jew, but who was neither 
loved nor respected, because of his heathen education 
and his incestuous habits ; beside him sits Bernice, at 
once wife and sister, previously married to her uncle, 
now the mistress of her own brother, and subsequently 
married to Polemon, King of Cilicia. 

There are, moreover, " the chief captains and principal 
men of the city; " a most notable assembly, comprising 
the financial wealth, the social influence, the political 
power of the day. They are met for a purpose ; a re- 
ligious zealot (for so men regard him) is to be examined 
for his heretical opinions; a bold man is to speak in his 
own defense ; novel ideas may be uttered. The man is 
entitled to a hearing, for his appeal to Rome has been 
entertained. He will be brought in fettered ; how will 
he bear himself? Will he blanch and quail before the 
royal presence, prove himself a braggart, or meet the 
issue with calmness and dignity, defy the impotency of 
human courts, and assert the dignity of manhood and 



1 6 Pulpit and Platform. 

the right of free speech and of free and unfettered 
thought ? 

These thoughts are in the minds of those who com- 
pose the assembly. They little dream of the historic im- 
portance of the event ; they have no idea that while the 
Roman record of the day's proceedings will perish and 
disappear the world will learn of all that happens only 
through the friends of the accused. How they would 
have been startled had they known that a day was not 
far distant when the world would have forgotten Herod 
and ask inquiringly ''Who was he?" while the noblest 
literature would embalm to immortality the name of 
Paul, and the swelling civilization of nineteen centuries 
prolong his praise ! 

Now they are intent only on the momentary consid- 
eration of being present at a trial and listening to an 
oration. 

THE DEFENSE. 

Paul begins courteously but clearly, refers to the 
manner of his life from his youth, as exhibiting Jewish 
scruples and devotion. He asserts that he is accused 
for the " hope of Israel," which once in ignorance he de- 
nounced, but being made wise by means of a heavenly 
vision he accepts, and now holds to be the true intent 
and meaning of the prophets. This is the occasion of 
criticism and difference, out of which have come the 
pending accusations. 

He proceeds forcibly and honestly to arraign the king 
before the tribunal of his conscience, " King Agrippa, 
believest thou the prophets?" He has not been di- 
verted from the main issue by the interruption of Festus, 
who has declared him " beside himself," crazed by the 
reading of many manuscripts. He earnestly and per- 



Oratory. ly 

sistently asserts that he knows that the king believes the 
truth of what he says : " The king knoweth," if Festus 
does not, " of these things, . . . for I am persuaded that 
none of these things are hidden from him." This extorts 
the admission, " Almost thou persuadest me." To per- 
suade is " to influence by argument, advice, entreaty, or 
expostulation." Agrippa yields, the difficult task of con- 
vincing anyone has been accomplished, the bigot Jew, 
the incestuous king, has admitted the force of truth so 
urged, and in such a presence. No greater triumph, 
under the circumstances, was possible. 

Paul spoke as one who had something to say instead 
of as one who " had to say something." And here we 
find the basal distinction between elocution and oratory. 

Elocution concerns itself with how to speak, with 
what graces of person and of manner, with what tones 
of voice and modulations of utterance, with what appro- 
priateness of position and gesticulation, u to say some- 
thing," and to say it appropriately ; whether it be the 
recitation of a poem or a descriptive narrative in prose, 
to suit the expression to the sentiment, so that the very 
naturalness of the rendering shall disarm all criticism of 
artificialness and meretriciousness. That is elocution. 

Oratory is " wisdom speaking." It is the utilization 
of the characteristic endowment of our human nature in 
directions worthy of it. Its influence is everywhere felt 
and universally acknowledged, but not easily explained. 
It may in part be accounted for by the influence of the 
power of sound. 

Sound reaches more than vision ; nothing presented to 
the eye tingles the blood as do things presented to the 
ear. Sound thrills in the woods at night ; in the loneli- 
2 



1 8 Pulpit and Platform. 

ness and darkness, the fall of leaves, the stir of living 
creatures in the grass, a thousand nameless sounds stir 
within us the feeling of mystic awe. Sight is finite, and 
felt to be so ; the imagination plays more freely among 
sounds, whose impressions are unshaped, and whose 
power, therefore, is more abiding. 

Memory and attention seem to take a deeper hold 
upon things presented by sound than by sight. Light 
and heat are but differing modes of the same natural 
fact ; vibration and radiation are one ; radiation is silent 
vibration. There is a difference of speed in the lower 
form of heat ; in the rush of the red flame, radiation is pal- 
pable ; but as the heat vanishes the red passes to orange, 
green, purple, blue, violet ; from the " rocket's red glare " 
to the azure of the sky and the deep green of the sea. 
In the quieter radiation we reach the essential life. It 
is because the sky is blue that our earth is not a barren, 
homeless wilderness, where heat consumes the day and 
cold congeals the night. This gives to us the atmos- 
phere, absorbing, modifying the solar rays, and therefore 
plants grow, and flowers bloom, fruits mature, and men 
breathe in' happiness, and toil in hope, and rest in security 
and peace. This quiet vibration is higher radiation, and 
illustrates how added beauty and power may be given to 
nature's store of blessings ; because of it we have the ever 
varying seasons, with the snow of winter, the greenness 
of spring, the golden glory of summer, the purpling 
beauty of autumn. The quieter vibration approaches 
silence, and prepares the mind to be influenced more 
powerfully by the concussion of sound. 

And sound also influences as it is formulated and di- 
rected. Sound addressed to the intellect sheds light 
over truth, over processes of argument, over means and 



Oratory. 19 

methods of conviction. Intensify the action of sound 
by addressing it to the conscience, and it calls up the 
soul from slumber, makes it restless and unquiet. Sound 
addressed to the experience bears wisdom and refresh- 
ment, cools and calms the fever of the spirit, consoles 
and comforts the heart. And, therefore, the Rev. Mr. 
Hood was wise when, in addressing the students of Mr. 
Spurgeon's training school, he spoke of speech as illus- 
trated by the "lamps, pitchers, and trumpets " which 
made way for the " sword of the Lord and of Gideon." 

Sound, of whatever quality ; utterance, of whatever 
grade, must after all be only the vehicle for something 
worthy of expression. Words which have a meaning 
must be marshaled in such order as to convey the exact 
impression which it is desired that they shall produce. 
Language should be nothing more than the garment in 
which ideas are dressed ; if the clothes are awkward and 
ungainly the person is hampered and not aided by them, 
and the more of such trumpery we place about us the 
more we are disfigured and encumbered. Sound may 
be mere noise and indicate hollowness ; in such a case 
speech will accomplish little but the exposure of our 
ignorance and folly ; for the plumage of the peacock 
can never give sweetness to the hoarse screech of the 
bird. 

Words with a sword behind them or a soul within 
them are the most blessed means of intercourse and 
most potent elements of war, for, as Max Mtiller has 
well said, " There can be no reason without speech, even 
as also it is true there can be no speech without reason." 
And it will be well to remember that Schelling has said, 
" Language transcends in depth the most conscious pro- 
duction of it. It is with language as with all organized 



20 Pulpit and Platform. 

beings, we imagine they spring into being blindly, and 
yet we cannot deny the intentional wisdom in the forma- 
tion of" every one of them." 

Therefore he whose profession it is to use language in 
public address, should surely attempt to use it with all 
due consideration of its awful depths and powers. In 
an age given to much frivolity and looseness of thought 
and expression we should attempt to obtain a better 
spirit and acquire dominion over mind by an earnest deal- 
ing with the rights and obligations, privileges and hopes, 
involved in human speech. To do this there should be 
not merely the study of words and of their meanings, but 
of their uses and of the varied methods of using them. 

The orator, however thorough a student, must above 
all things be a man ! It is the man, and not any man- 
ner or information he may acquire, which lays the foun- 
dation for successful public speaking. When a man 
rises to speak he soon makes the impression of his mind 
upon us; he shows his mental qualifications as an orator. 
By this he succeeds or fails in making us feel that he is 
eloquent, and he will succeed in spite of what the elocu- 
tionists call a bad manner, or he will fail though he 
speaks all the parts of his discourse as he has been taught 
in the schools. 

Every hearer knows that a public speaker soon con- 
vinces him of the speaker's power or weakness by what 
he says, independently of the manner in which he says it. 
He may do with his hands whatever he will ; the hearer 
may not know that he has any hands ; he may shut any 
number of fingers, even all of them ; project one of them 
with such an arrowy or dirk-like motion as to suggest 
the inquiry, "Is this a dagger which I see before me?" 
thrust his hand into his bosom, or plunge it into his 



Oratory. 21 

pocket, or place it on his side like Punshon. The afflatus 
of inspiration may appear to be on him by his pushing 
back his sleeves or other ungainly sign ; his voice may 
be set on a gamut of three notes with no chromatic in- 
terval ; but that man may have power to interest and 
sway an audience as much as human oratory can do it, 
and he who does not feel that the speaker is an eloquent 
man has no true susceptibility to eloquence. It is the 
manhood that does it. 

There are some preachers whose manner is devoid of all 
attractiveness; their reading of the Holy Scriptures and 
of hymns is simply execrable; as to any kind of knowl- 
edge of the rules of speaking, " fair science smiled not 
on their humble birth ; '' yet so great and so good a man 
and accomplished an orator as Dr. Nehemiah Adams 
said, " If I were to choose the preacher under whose in- 
struction I should prefer to sit year after year it would 
be one of those men. They subdue me ; they lead me 
captive ; they make me weep ; they makeme glad, as no 
other men do. I remember their wise sentiments as I 
should the words of an oracle. Compared with them, a 
man who assails my senses with his elocution, and is 
always thrusting upon my notice his motions, his tones 
of voice, making me always think of him as a good 
speaker, is a man from whom I wish to flee, and of whom 
I think as I do of a man whom, with all his pious tones, I 
conceive to be a hypocrite." 

On the other hand, a man may speak before you ac- 
complished in all the rules of art ; while he recites or de- 
claims an eloquent composition he may make you feel 
that he is a powerful speaker ; but if he lacks manhood 
he shows this lack in his own address, and not all his 
external accomplishments can make you feel that he is 



22 Pulpit and Platform. 

eloquent. If he is a preacher he may resemble a friend 
of mine, who " says nothing " more eloquently than any 
other man I know, but his hearers will soon be weary of 
him ; they will feel, justly enough, that he tires them and 
does not feed them. If he is a lawyer and thinks his 
oratory will win his cases, he will find himself the butt 
of bench and bar, the laughing-stock of the jury box. A 
young man who thinks that because he has learned posi- 
tions and gestures, and can trill his " r's," and has subdued 
his voice far down into the bass clef, he will therefore be 
counted eloquent, will soon find himself brought to grief 
and put to shame. Men know what is eloquence and 
what is pretense, though nine tenths of them can quote 
no rule to show the difference. The man, independent 
of his manner, will convince them that he has power 
over their hearts and minds ; or, on the other hand, the 
manner, however orderly and elegant, will fail to convince 
them that there is much in the man besides his manner. 

By manner, I mean that which a man has learned and 
put on ; that is, how to stand, how to make gestures, 
how to modulate his voice. Manner in speech is to be 
distinguished from the "manners of a man," which are 
always the true expression and exponent of the inmost 
self. In " the manners " the inward sentiment of defer- 
ence, love, kindness, or contempt, selfishness, and pride, 
involuntarily appear. Now, as a man shows his secret 
feelings in his manner, no matter what artificial disguise 
he may assume, so a public speaker will involuntarily 
show his heart and mind to the public discernment, let 
him put on what manner of behaving or expressing him- 
self before them he may. 

In helping to make orators by culture we must do as 
Nature does when she makes eloquent men. She makes 



Oratory. 23 

the man first, and his manners are the consequence or 
result of what the man is. The first thing necessary is 
to cultivate or to possess the ability to discern and to ex- 
press truth with strength, beauty, fitness, and taste; the 
power of discerning and distinguishing what is right and 
suitable in discourse — this is the fundamental qualifica- 
tion. 

To be an orator the master of speech must not only 
be a scholar, with the manners which accompany and im- 
ply manhood, he must also have an artist's gift. Indeed, 
his success will largely depend upon his artistic power. 
All preparation, all method in fact, presupposes this. A 
man may have all the natural qualifications and acquired 
graces for oratory, but he will still need the care and 
knowledge and study and the reverent spirit of the 
artist to qualify him for his work. The arrangement 
of a discourse, the arguments to be employed, the illus- 
trations to be used, even the feelings to be touched and 
the words to express them, are to be as carefully selected 
as are the colors on an artist's palette. The prudence 
and wisdom which genius uses upon its masterpieces 
are to be exercised by the orator, and it savors only of 
the inferior minds to disdain or to decry it. 

Quintilian says: " Hacc prcecepta eloquentice cogita- 
tioni sunt necessaria " — the rules of eloquence apply to 
the way of thinking as well as to the way of expression. 
To assume the manner of an orator without possessing 
the manners which the mental qualities of the orator 
necessitate is to expose one's self to ridicule. Thus 
pretentious men have brought contempt and odium 
upon a useful as well as ornamental branch of study, 
and by assuming to possess that which they conspicu- 
ously lack have made deficiency more apparent as " they 



24 Pulpit and Platform. 

pronounced their long-tailed words with a sonorous wab- 
ble of voice, calculated to produce a feeling of respectful 
awe in the minds of their hearers." There is also danger 
of exciting the criticism of an audience by too close at- 
tention to the manner of delivery, and this can only be 
avoided by being the man instead of assuming to be 
thoroughly furnished and fully equipped. 

Observation and reflection show us that those who 
overcome the prejudices of their hearers, arising from 
some untoward manner, by the immediate force of what 
they say, are few; they are the geniuses of the pro- 
fession, always limited in numbers, whose success is not 
to be expected without labor and art. Indeed, in the 
case of some to whom we attribute native genius as the 
cause of their eminent success, we shall find that they 
have either made art a second nature by intense study 
or by their ready and quick perception and versatility 
of talent have applied the rules of art intuitively, as some 
children have a natural aptitude in speaking good gram- 
mar before they have studied the science or even know 
that there is one. If we will only remember that as art 
is a handmaid to nature so oratory is an exponent of 
culture ; and there are no limits to the extent which art 
may have in our manner of speaking, nor can we practice 
upon the rules of oratory without success. 

Well would it be for all who are called upon to address 
their fellow-men, to act on the grand principles laid down 
by America's greatest orator, who said : " When public 
bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, 
when great interests are at stake and strong passion 
excited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is 
connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. 
Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which 



Oratory. 25 

produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not 
consist in speech ; it cannot be brought from far. Labor 
and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. 
Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way ; 
they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in 
the subject, and in the occasion. 

" Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of dec- 
lamation — all may aspire after it ; they cannot reach it. 
It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a 
fountain from the earth or the bursting forth of volcanic 
fires with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces 
taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied 
contrivances of speech shock and disgust men, when 
their lives and the fate of their wives and their children 
and their country hang on the decision of the hour. 
Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and 
all elaborate oratory contemptible. Then patriotism is 
eloquent ; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear 
conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high 
purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking 
on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every 
feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, 
to his object — this is eloquence, or rather it is something 
greater and higher than all eloquence ; it is action, noble, 
sublime, Godlike action." 

Instruments of music, perfectly constructed, may at- 
tain the highest perfection of musical sound, and an or- 
gan in which the " vox humana " stops were perfect 
might turn the fable of Orpheus into a fulfilled prophecy, 
and the imagination might almost rearrange the stars 
in the constellation Lyra. Yet in such an instrument, 
however perfect, there would be still wanting the imme- 
diate connection of the soul of man with its sources of 



26 Pulpit and Platform. 

harmony ; the operations of that ever varying and inimita- 
ble control which the feelings have over the human voice 
itself, the best of all the beautiful products of God's 
benevolence and skill. No beast, however great its joy, 
no bird, however rapturous its song, can articulate its 
utterance so as to rival man. His words are instruments 
of music, his voice the call that wakes them into har- 
mony. An ignorant man uses them to confuse thought, 
as was done at Babel ; a master touches them to give 
them life and soul. Some words sound like drums, 
others breathe memories sweet as flutes ; some call like 
clarions ; some shout a charge like trumpets ; some are 
as sweet as the talk of children, others as rich as a moth- 
er's answering love. The words which have universal 
power are those that have been keyed and chorded in 
the great orchestral chamber of the human heart. Some 
words touch as many notes at a stroke as when an or- 
ganist puts ten fingers on the keyboard. There are single 
words which contain life histories, and to hear them 
spoken is like hearing "church bells beyond the stars." 
" He who successfully knows how to touch and handle the 
home words of his mother tongue need ask no higher gift!" 
Study of words, a relish for them ; study of men, a 
sympathy with them ; purity of thought, a mental clean- 
ness, associated delicacy of perception, and appropriate- 
ness of speech will help to such experiences as alone 
summon " thoughts that breathe and words that burn." 
Then be men, students, artists, true men, looking up- 
ward for inspiration, looking inward for power. Love 
that which is good, associate with that which is elevat- 
ing, dwell in an atmosphere of pure affections and en- 
nobling thoughts, and you will find yourself more capable 
of commanding proper utterance. Then will come at call, 



Oratory. 27 

" Not such words as flashed 
From the fierce demagogue's unthinking rage, 
To madden for a moment and expire, 
But words which bear the impress of great deeds, 
Winged for the future 'neath the eagle's home, 
Or in the sea caves, where old Ocean roars, 
Till some heroic leader bids them forth 
To thrill the world with echoes." 

Instead of standing, as he does, a model of all persua- 
sive oratory, Paul might have declaimed a piece and set 
forth a doctrine ; but no matter with what excellence of 
diction and what elegance of style, though his posture 
might have been grace itself, his gesture all appropriate- 
ness, his voice modulated to all niceties of expression, 
he would simply have been a declaimer, a renderer of 
words and sentiments which might be beautiful indeed, 
but would be valueless for all purposes of influence and 
control of men and destinies. But the man was too 
great to seek for elocutionary effects, too grand to be 
dependent on the niceties of technical art ; he spoke, as 
every man so situated must always speak, " the words of 
truth and soberness." 

And these words rang, not only in the ears of Festus, 
Agrippa, and Bernice, not only overwhelmed the chief 
captains and the principal men of the city, but have been 
heard along the ages and have their echo in our hearts 
to-night. 

"O God, who through the preaching of the blessed 
Apostle St. Paul, hast caused the light of the Gospel to 
shine throughout the world, grant, we beseech thee, that 
we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, 
may show forth our thankfulness unto thee for the same 
by following the holy doctrine which he taught ; through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen" 



THE PREPARATION IN STUDY. 

So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the 
sense, and caused them to understand the reading. — Neh. viii, 8. 

We may, indeed, wish that God had so ordered our 
minds that no difficulties had ever arisen ; that the very- 
sight of his word had caused a conviction of the truth 
and divine authority of every part of it to flash on every 
mind ; that it had been written in some universal lan- 
guage, which required no aid of translation to be intelli- 
gible in every land and age ; that no paragraph of it had 
been difficult in structure or obscure in meaning, requir- 
ing to be illustrated from the human author's habitual 
mode of expression or the circumstances of his age, edu- 
cation, or nationality. But, whatever our wish may be, 
this has not been God's plan. He has given his word in 
such form as to tax our powers to make much of it plain, 
and has, indeed, so ordered that the modes in which we 
obtain insight of his will shall be to very many a trial of 
our faith. 

I. The critical study of the Bible is not only indispen- 
sable, but it is a work of great labor, because, as John 
Milton long ago wrote, " All its truths, though recorded 
centuries ago, have an application to each succeeding 
age, find their interpretations in histories and lives as 
widely differing in character from those to whom they 
were first addressed as their periods of action are re- 
mote." " Not a few of them being of the nature of their 
Author, with whom a thousand years are as a day, are 



The Preparation in Study. 29 

not fulfilled punctually and at once, but have springing 
and germinant accomplishment throughout many ages, 
though the height or fullness of them may refer to some 
one age." When God closed the written revelation of his 
will he endowed the books in which it was recorded with 
a fruitfulness (in some sort supernatural) which speaks 
of their divine origin, causing them to unfold new stores 
of riches to the praying student every time he opens 
them, and giving them a power far above every con- 
trivance of man's wisdom to adapt their never-failing 
instruction to every new exigency in the history of the 
world. 

Inspiration, though it be plenary and direct from the 
Almighty, removes none of the local, individual, and 
national influences which attach to the writers of the 
sacred books. It lies back of them all, it sets them all 
in motion, but does not obliterate, scarcely fades, even, 
any of the peculiarities arising from them. Thus and 
thence has arisen the necessity which exists for the close 
investigation and prolonged research in language, his- 
tory, and art by which alone we are able to comprehend 
the true intent and real meaning of the sacred oracles. 

However vast this field, it is but a part of the work, a 
mere section of the labor on which each man appointed 
of God must spend his time and energies. He thus may 
" give the sense," but this will not always enable him to 
" cause the people to understand the meaning." 

2. For this he must know God's works as well, other- 
wise he could not present God in his own mode, for 
these works " declare his glory and show his handi- 
work ; " and the presentation would not be after God's 
pattern, who clothed the earth with beauty and spread 
over it its azure roof. His Son spoke often of the lilies 



30 Pulpit and Platform. 

and the sparrows, loved to walk on the shores of Gen- 
nesaret and to climb the heights of Tabor and Hermon, 
made all nature contribute to his teaching, and overlaid 
Palestine with a beauty of parable drawn from its scen- 
ery but more lasting than its hills. And there must be 
not only that contemplative familiarity which develops 
sentiment and tones the mind into awe and sublimity, 
but that close scrutiny and scientific knowledge which 
will enable him to gather the facts of discovery and dis- 
arm them of antagonism and make them tributary to 
devoutness. He must be able to speak when the as- 
tronomer, bewildered by his theories, is dumb, or when 
"geology sits mute amid her excavations." 

3. He must also know man, man in himself, man in 
his relations, man in his historic development. He who 
would deal with men must know them, know the secret 
springs of motive and how they impinge upon each 
other, and be able to comprehend how slight variations 
and differences in beginnings can result in such widely 
differing paths and destinies ; must know men in their 
relations and the duties which grow out of them ; must 
be able to trace back to their incipient stages in the in- 
dividual the great processions which have revolutionized 
the world and changed the tenor of its history ; must 
understand the thoughts of men and be able at least to 
classify them in their logical order, so as to suggest the 
line of argument which will effectually impale error. 

4. And besides this he must know theology, the no- 
blest study for man, since it leads to the contemplation 
of the divine mind in its creating, sustaining, redeeming, 
and sanctifying acts ; penetrates also the deep recesses 
and secrets of the human heart, and is, besides, indissol- 
ubly connected with both the outward and inward his- 



The Preparation in Study. 31 

tory of the Church, which, being the selected depository 
of heavenly truth, has, both in its faithfulness to this 
trust and its neglect of it, so deeply affected the destinies 
of the race. 

The preacher, perhaps more than all other men, needs 
the widest range of knowledge and culture in a day 
when the records of the past and the developments of 
the present are attempted to be used against Christian- 
ity ; men in the Church asserting the sufficiency of rea- 
son, and men out of the Church denying the sufficiency 
of revelation. The preacher owes it to himself, and to 
his hearers, and to God, to be prepared against all error. 
He must be ready not merely to declaim the proposition 
but to exhibit the fact that truth is never antagonistic 
to religion ; and if he have not time nor skill to refute 
in detail each passing error as it flies, he ought to know 
the category in which it lies and be ready and able to 
point out the class of weapons which would annihilate, 
even if he be not practiced in their use. For since his 
chief business is soul-saving he can only look on art and 
science and philosophy and literature as subordinate, 
and may not spend the hours necessary to master their 
details ; but their principles and theories he must know, 
that he may use them in the elucidation of truth or ex- 
pose their tendencies to evil. And all this because the 
preacher is to talk to men, and he will find his chief dif- 
ficulty not in their cultivation but in their lack of it. Of 
most congregations it may be said to-day, as it was said 
by Paul of the Hebrews, " For when for the time ye 
ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you 
again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; 
and are become such as have need of milk, and not of 



32 Pulpit and Platform. 

There is great difficulty in so presenting the truth 
that it shall be comprehended by the masses of men. 
Many good men err in their attempt to do this; they 
dilute and attenuate the doctrine of God, until it ceases 
to be the sincere milk of the word by reason of excessive 
skimming. 

It requires no little learning to be correct, no little 
study to be simple, and a great command of language to 
be plain. It is your uneducated, or at best your half- 
educated men who confound their audiences with great 
puffings of vanity and exhibitions of bombast. Such men 
make religion appear contemptible and themselves ridicu- 
lous in the eye of the more thoughtful by their imperfect 
definitions, their unfairness in the statement of objec- 
tions and the constant intrusion of antagonisms and at- 
tacks, which they neither comprehend nor possess the 
power to refute; keeping thus their congregations in- 
formed about the existence of heresies which they never 
otherwise would have heard of, and really arming them 
against the truth. Imagine the feeling of disgust with 
which a devout scientist, attending a metropolitan service 
to hear an advertised reply to Tyndall's " prayer-test," 
would be seized, when he realized from the first remark 
of the preacher that he had neither knowledge of Tyn- 
dall's proposition nor ability to state it fairly. One of 
old thus satirizes such pretenders : " First of all they 
seize upon some text from which they draw something 
which they call doctrine, and it may well be said to ' be 
drawn ' from the words, forasmuch as it seldom naturally 
flows or results from them. In the next place they 
branch it into several heads ; whereupon, for the prose- 
cution of these, they repair to some trusty concordance, 
which never fails them, and by the help of that they 



The Preparation in Study. 33 

range six or seven Scriptures under each head, which 
Scriptures they prosecute one by one, first amplifying 
and enlarging upon one until they have spoiled it ; then, 
that being done, they pass to another, which each in its 
turn suffers accordingly; and these impertinent and un- 
premeditated enlargements they look upon as the mo- 
tions, effects, and breathings of the Spirit, and therefore 
much beyond those carnal ordinances of sense and reason 
supported by industry and study." 

The thoroughly educated preacher alone is lucid, sim- 
ple, and intelligible, because his words are well chosen, his 
plan all defined, his logic exact. He brings no " unbeaten 
oil " to fill the lamps of the sanctuary. He makes no 
parade of technicalities, no flourish of his tools, but, using 
them in the study, leaves them there. But little do the 
people who hear him know how many years of toil in pro- 
fane literature have been spent to qualify him for his sacred 
office ; little do the people know how many hours have 
been spent in preparing to present the truth so plainly 
that a child can carry away the sermon to his home and 
think he could have preached it himself ! 

There is no just cause to fear that true culture will 
lead to pride or carelessness in the regular duties of the 
sacred office. Nothing is better calculated to keep a 
man humble in his own esteem, nor more likely to make 
him sensible of the measure of his responsibility, than an 
introduction to those fields of thought which lie open 
before the intelligent student ; fields upon whose margin 
he may stand in wonder ; fields not to be exhausted by 
one man or one generation, but fields whose full and com- 
plete investigation may employ the ages of eternity. A 
man feels his own littleness in such a presence, and prayer 
and humility are more probable and appropriate than 



34 Pulpit and Platform. 

pride. Happily for us the examples of preeminent 
culture in the history of our own Church are equally 
prominent for works of practical efficiency. Fisk, Olin, 
Emery, Bangs, Dempster, Durbin, McClintock, Whedon, 
and Curry were superior intellects and also superior 
workers, some of them against fearful bodily infirmities. 
Culture and success were not meant to be divorced ; God 
joined them together, as in the case of Moses, skilled in 
all the learning of Egypt, and in Paul, the foremost 
scholar of his age. 

I must speak of the peculiar responsibility under 
which the preacher lives and labors. Any man who can 
estimate this aright knows that, while at times it stimu- 
lates, at other times and often it almost crushes him. 
No man who feels that he has been called of God to 
labor, who knows that the accuracy of his investigation, 
the honesty of his interpretations, and the faithfulness 
of his toil involves the destinies of others besides 
himself; no man who finds how much of faithful rever- 
ence and persevering toil it requires to enable him, while 
he probes, examines, and tests, still to worship with hum- 
ble adoration whatever is shown to be divine ; no man 
who comprehends these things will dare, as he values his 
soul, to enter on theological study or on pastoral duty 
without anxious prayer. When he looks around him, 
surveys the extent of the field and estimates his own 
feebleness, hope and courage may almost desert him. 
He may well cry out with the apostle, " Who is sufficient 
for these things?" Yet in this very crushing there may 
be a development of strength ; the man may be ob- 
scured the better to disclose the cross which he upholds. 
He shall reap his reward as he looks abroad over nature, 
and backward upon history, and upward through philos- 



The Preparation in Study. 35 

ophy, and sees throughout one mind supreme, subordi- 
nating every detail to one governing purpose. The whole 
creation will appear to him like a sphere of crystal lighted 
from within ; he will be able to gather illustrations from 
all sides to elucidate special truths, and he will feel his 
vigor refreshed, his spirit toned to a higher beauty, his 
mental force made far more quickening as he marshals 
the harmonies of all these around him and gathers their 
secret influence upon him. Above him all the while is 
God ; within him all the while is the Holy Ghost ; around 
him all the while are those who will meet him at God's 
bar; open to him always are the avenues of blessing 
through which God strengthens and anoints his serv- 
ants. These, realized, will give us a ministry which 
shall be a living power, full of beauty and of achieved 
results, which, like Aaron's mystic rod, shall bud, bear 
blossoms, and bring forth fruit. 

The preacher was a Christian before his culture began. 
He was a child of God ; God had called him ; the eye of 
the Church was on him. Culture was not intended to 
make him a Christian nor to keep him a Christian, but to 
qualify him, already a Christian, for the Christian minis- 
try. We may sometimes overlook this, though we know 
well that all the colleges and schools in the world can- 
not make a Christian or a minister of Christ, while any 
one of them may help a Christian to become a useful 
minister if God calls him. To fulfill the work of the 
ministry successfully we need all of preparation, all of 
culture ; but we need something more. The apostles 
knew all the facts of the gospels, all the doctrines of 
Christ when their Lord ascended ; but they were not 
qualified to preach, did not preach, dared not preach, 
were forbidden to preach, until the Spirit gave them 



36 Pulpit and Platform. 

utterance. Saul's culture did not make him a minister, 
but after God made him a Christian his culture made 
his ministry effective. John Wesley, though a fellow of 
Lincoln College, was not thereby made a minister ; but 
when by experience he knew " the fellowship of Christ's 
sufferings " his labor was more successful by reason of his 
culture. We need all treasures of knowledge, all achieve- 
ments of art, all the power of literature, all the gathered 
research of science and philosophy ; but every thought 
must be " brought into captivity to the obedience of 
Christ ; " all learning and all scholarship must be brought 
to the font and baptized into Christianity. We must 
gather all gifts of knowledge, wisdom, eloquence, and 
power and lay them on the altar, and not dare to use them 
for the ministry until God has sent down fire from heaven. 
For preaching was divinely instituted, and the office of the 
preacher is a holy work ; it can be filled only by one in 
whom God has wrought his own work ; and a consistent 
Christian life will do more to make preaching effective 
than the knowledge of a library full of evidences. God 
has not promised his Church an educated ministry nor 
an eloquent ministry, probably because learning and elo- 
quence may be acquired by personal effort, but he has 
promised that without which all learning and eloquence 
is vain, saying, " I will clothe her priests with salvation." 
How sad, how hopeless, would be our condition but 
for this assurance ! If we be not men of pure and holy 
aspirations no class of men are more easily led astray, 
and no power but that of God can make and keep us 
pure and efficient ; for we must lead the people. The 
day has long gone by, if indeed it ever existed, when men 
might stand by the wayside and say " Go ; " now we must 
press forward and say, " Come ! " 



The Preparation in Study. 37 

The true minister must march, like " Great-heart," 
by the side of his people or at their head, guiding them 
through "sloughs of despond," and " conflicts with Giant 
Evils," and " valleys of humiliation," and " enchanted 
grounds," and u shadows of death," to the " Beulahs," 
and "delectable mountains," and "celestial gates " of 
the Christian life. This no man can do who has not him- 
self experienced the truth he preaches. But when the 
Gospel has been comprehended by the judgment, and the 
Christ of the gospels been apprehended by the spirit ; 
when with the prophet he has seen the Lord sitting on a 
throne, surrounded by seraphim whose cries move the 
posts of the doors; when conscious of human infirmity 
he has cried out, " Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean 
lips," then, when the seraph touches his lips with a live 
coal from off the altar and he feels clothed with salva- 
tion, he will cry out, " Here am I ; send me ; " and as he 
goes he will speak words which will be sound in philoso- 
phy because true in experience. 

For the Christian ministry we need the most imperial 
type of intellect, and we need to have the brightest in- 
tellect trained to the highest point of effectiveness for 
the sublime work of saving souls; but the supreme qual- 
ification, after all, is sympathy with God and souls. 
Where this is not fundamental no superstructure can be 
satisfactory. And this cannot be acquired, it must be 
bestowed. God alone bestows it, and he gives it in 
response to prayer. The preacher for whom his people 
pray, and who prays for it himself, may receive it, and 
when he does he possesses a mightier power than that 
of the mystic rod of Moses, and wears a holier garment 
than Elijah's falling mantle. He lives near the heart of 
God ; he must also live near the heart of the world. He 



38 Pulpit and Platform. 

dwells amid the dying ; he should also be near the mercy 
seat. He is up at the headsprings whence issue the 
waters of life ; he may tinge or turn the gushing stream. 
His hand is on the helm of the bark of many destinies; 
failure in duty or in prayer may blind his eye to danger 
or dull his ear to warnings and the bark be wrecked 
amid the breakers. God give him light and keep him 
faithful ! 



THE CROSS. 

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. — Gal vi, 14. 

The apostle uses the expression "cross of our Lord 
to indicate that which is peculiar to the system of salva- 
tion through Christ. He seized upon a salient and lead- 
ing feature in the plan of redemption as descriptive of 
the whole ; and the term has been generally adopted as 
a laconic but appropriate phrase to express the essence 
of the Gospel. He gloried in the cross because he be- 
lieved it to be " the power of God unto salvation," mean- 
ing thereby that it was a divine plan to regenerate and 
renew mankind. 

On the same grounds we may also glory in it, for it 
has lost none of its efficacy, none of its spiritual and 
moral power. But in the years that have intervened 
since his day, while the number of its adherents has 
been increasing from the original one hundred and twenty 
until they are counted by hundreds of millions, there 
have been developed added reasons for glorying in this 
soul-saving power. 

Many men do not feel the effects in their own spiritual 
natures of the doctrines of Christianity. I propose to 
speak to them of the indirect influences of these doc- 
trines. Do not, however, mistake me and suppose, as 
some do, that such results as I shall mention are any- 
thing but secondary and subordinate. I call them in- 
direct, not because they are not legitimate, but because 



40 Pulpit and Platform. 

they are not chief; for, however powerful Christianity 
has proved itself to be to soften the harder features of 
the human character, to restrain the ferocious passions 
of the human breast, to elevate the tone of moral feel- 
ing, to induce sobriety and good order into social life in 
communities where in any measure of its native purity it 
is professed and practiced, these are but its subordinate 
and subsidiary effects, the leaves and blossoms which 
are scattered round the stem of the tree of life, whose 
fruit is only ripened in the renewed heart and gathered 
only in eternity. 

It is a well-known fact in the constitution of the nat- 
ural world that one great and pervading principle, while 
it accomplishes the highest purposes, is made subservient 
to the minutest results. A more impressive evidence or 
illustration of this idea can scarcely be conceived — of the 
combined magnificence and simplicity in the arrange- 
ment of the universe — than that the operation of the same 
law of gravitation keeps the earth in its orbit, and bal- 
ances the crystal dewdrop on the petals of the tenderest 
flower. A similar principle prevails in the moral world, 
though not having been so much studied it has not been 
so fully developed. We cannot doubt that when the 
intelligent mind, according to the original law of its 
nature, revolves around the center of its light and happi- 
ness, all its subordinate relations and interests are, at the 
same time, in conformity with the will of infinite wisdom 
and benevolence. By whatever means, therefore, man is 
restored to his true place in reference to God, those are 
the means by which he is also restored to the enjoyment 
of all the blessings of his intellectual and social, as well as 
of his moral nature. Whatever restores him to God re- 
stores him to himself. 



The Cross. 41 

No one can doubt that God designed the human 
family to exist in a high state of civilization, by which I 
mean in a state of at once external comfort and of social 
happiness. The indications of such a purpose are seen 
in the visible results of creation. By supplying the am- 
ple and varied resources within our reach, by endow- 
ing us with sagacity to discover them and their uses, we 
have the clearest expression of God's intention that we 
should employ and use them. It would be folly to sup- 
pose that men discovered by happy accident the uses of 
wood and iron and stone, the adaptation of the mechan- 
ical powers to lighten labor, and not acknowledge that 
these materials were made and placed where they are 
for the very purpose of being used. The affections, too, 
viewed in connection with their objects, seem to evince 
benevolent design as to the social condition of the race ; 
love of country, of offspring, of kindred, the tender and 
endearing ties of which the heart is susceptible, exhibit 
our capability of happiness. 

It might, therefore, naturally be expected that a reve- 
lation from the same Being, who has provided the mate- 
rial for the physical comfort and the capacity for social 
enjoyment, would have a direct tendency to improve and 
elevate his social condition. And this we find to be the 
case. Wherever the truth has been known it has exer- 
cised great influence upon the social welfare of men, and 
Christianity is identified with the progress of science, 
of art, of domestic happiness, and of national prosperity. 

Of course a variety of elements must combine to raise 
a state to political power and ascendency ; but all modern 
history has demonstrated that the possession of a reli- 
gion is among the chiefest of them. No heathen nation 
since the introduction of Christianity into the world has 



42 Pulpit and Platform. 

ever achieved the measure of refinement and social power 
reached by the ancient states. And even of those re- 
mote times, to which we habitually refer as proofs of 
early grandeur and enlarged prosperity, proof is want- 
ing that they attained any very high degree of social 
comfort, at least among any large proportion of the 
people. 

Pagan antiquity has left behind prodigies of labor and 
of art, and the great remains of human works, such as 
the columns of Palmyra, broken in the desert, the tem- 
ples of Paestum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centu- 
ries, or the mutilated fragments of Greek sculpture in the 
Acropolis of Athens, present evidences of flourishing 
genius and accumulated wealth ; but they do not tell of 
social life blessed by this genius or this wealth. On the 
contrary, the colossal monuments of early times show 
the concentration of national power and lead to the 
thought of rigid despotism — are evidences of cruelty 
rather than of comfort and content. We cannot think 
of the pyramids of Egypt without recalling the unwilling 
bondsmen and their oppressive labors and hardships. 
Unenlightened nations have attained that kind of great- 
ness which arises from subjugating others to the yoke of 
oppression, but how dark and revolting the contrast in 
the view of those who know of civil liberty ! How sad 
and forbidding the contrast presented by comparing 
this lordship of the few and serfdom of the many, with 
the equality of rights and the personal freedom enjoyed 
by all in the lands where Christianity has flourished ! 
For facts demonstrate that where Christianity has been 
purest and most powerful there have been found the 
highest grade of personal worth, the purest benevolence, 
the wisest legislation, the most enlarged knowledge, the 



The Cross. 43 

most general distribution of comfort. Where Christian- 
ity has become corrupt and its light obscured by super- 
stition civilization has been retarded or has stood still. 
Where it has emerged from its partial obscuration 
society has sprung up in immediate improvements. 
Where it has ceased to shine upon a land the glory of 
that land has departed. Of these facts the history of 
modern Europe is full of proofs. Not that the whole 
world has advanced beyond the civilization of antiquity, 
for there are still to be found lands reeking with cruelty 
and crime, others where little or no advance has been 
realized for centuries, others still where the arts of peace 
and the materials for human happiness have diminished, 
and a retrograde movement of society has obtained. In 
some lands the race has advanced, in others stood still, 
in others fallen away, but the one fact of Christianity 
explains all these apparently diverse situations and 
problems. The same blue sky hangs in its azure beauty 
over the ^Egean and the Adriatic that gilded the glory 
of Augustus and the splendor of Pericles ; the same 
hoary Lebanon lifts its giant brow to heaven that shad- 
owed the queenly Palmyra and the gorgeous Heliopo- 
lis. The same bright sun is mirrored forth from the 
flashing Euphrates that crowned with its coronal of glory 
the lofty turrets of Nineveh and the glittering battle- 
ments of Babylon. The same old Nile that carried the 
barges of Cleopatra and the galleys of Sesostris pours its 
fertilizing tide in grandeur and mystery. But all that 
remains of the glory that once encircled these storied 
spots is the crumbling arch, the broken column, the 
mournful signature of time in the handwriting of death. 
Turkey, Persia, Syria, and the sunny climes of the East, 
with the finest harbors, the richest soils, the balmiest 



44 Pulpit and Platform. 

climates, and the most varied products in the world, 
have been left to widespread barrenness and desolation ; 
while the cold and misty island of Britain and the 
ice-clad and granite-bound land of the Pilgrims have fos- 
tered and produced the greenest and palmiest growth of 
civilization that has ever blessed the world. The old 
lands had their heroes and their histories, stars of benig- 
nant fortune smiled on their birth and progress; but 
they had no light from the star of Bethlehem, no voices 
praising God in the highest while they published peace 
and good will to men. 

The many agencies at work to produce the great and 
complex result of modern progress were largely rein- 
forced by some mighty impulse. The springs that 
swelled and filled the wide and rolling stream of life 
flowed from Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, Greece, Rome, 
Arabia, Scythia, and Scandinavia ; but from the time that 
the fountain was unsealed on Calvary (whose pure gush- 
ings are yet to cleanse the world) the troubled tide of 
European civilization has had mingled with it the heal- 
ing waters from that hallowed source. 

When Christianity dawned on the world the Roman 
Empire had reached the acme of its splendor and great- 
ness. It had risen from the great sea, the fourth form 
in the prophet's vision, dark, mysterious, iron-toothed, 
terrible; stamping under foot the rights of the weak and 
helpless ; absorbing with insatiate greed and startling 
rapidity provinces, states, and empires, until its ban- 
nered eagles saluted the sun as he wheeled up over the 
flashing waters of the great Euphrates, and only bade 
him a lingering farewell as he sank behind the cold and 
stormy cliffs of Albion. 

The world was prostrate at the feet of this haughty 



The Cross. 45 

and giant power, and no arm was deemed strong enough 
to grapple with its Titanic strength. Rome was made the 
focus of the world, and all the riches, elegance, refine- 
ment, and splendor of the earth were poured into this 
august and mighty metropolis. The brilliancy of intel- 
lect, literature, and art that marked this period has made 
its very name descriptive of the most polished era of 
subsequent nations, and the Augustan age to stand by 
universal consent as the magnificent type of all succeed- 
ing national splendor. 

Into this golden age of wealth and luxury Christianity 
was precipitated, to permeate and influence it, or to be 
swept away and destroyed by it. There was ample 
scope for the exercise of its peculiar influences ; its 
whole spirit and temper were directly antagonistic to the 
causes which ultimately produced the downfall of this 
mighty power — a power which passed from the budding 
vigor of its wolf-nursed youth, through the crowned and 
imperial strength of an iron maturity, to the driveling 
dotage of an effete and corrupt old age. Christianity 
might retard but could not avert the day of doom ; it 
possessed no elixir of immortality to bring the vigor of 
youth back to its tottering frame. 

During the early years of the first century, while it was 
acquiring its first five hundred converts, the influence of 
Christianity was continuously retarded by wasting and 
bloody persecutions, and soon after these persecutions 
ceased, by the civil recognition of Christianity, the im- 
perial form of government was broken to pieces. But 
its influences were gradually though silently diffusing 
themselves through society, so that in the time of 
Trajan we know, from official documents, that non- 
Christians were recognized to be pagans, that is, vil- 



\6 Pulpit and Platform. 

lagers. And in the later part of the second century Ter- 
tullian could say, " We are but of yesterday, yet we have 
filled your islands, towns, burgs, the camp, the senate, 
and the forum ; and every age, sex, and rank are con- 
verts." Writers of this period build triumphant argu- 
ments in its favor on the manifest influence it had in 
purifying society. 

It also exerted a very decided influence in modifying 
Roman jurisprudence. It abolished theatrical and glad- 
iatorial representations, ameliorated the condition of 
slaves and prisoners, limited the power of fathers over 
their children, invested woman with new rights, and 
caused more ample protection to be extended to widows 
and orphans. 

Between the close of the first century and the begin- 
ning of the fifth its adherents grew from five hundred 
thousand to fifteen million. During this period the fierce 
and fiery swarms of barbarians, roused from the dark 
forests of the North, assailed their former invaders. 
From being despised and conquered they were first 
feared, then deprecated, then bribed, until at last, tempted 
by the rich and sunny fields of Italy, and emboldened by 
the cowering weakness of luxurious and enfeebled Rome, 
they burst forth in a torrent of fire and steel, and swept 
from the feeble hands of degenerate Rome the trembling 
scepter of the Western world. When the barbarian had 
broken down the outer walls of Roman greatness he was 
confronted by a mightier power, before which he quailed, 
and to whose high and unearthly authority his proud 
spirit succumbed. It put irksome restraints upon his 
conduct ; yet such was the secret might resident in this 
embodied form of a divine life, that the stern and lion- 
hearted children of the forest meekly bowed down at its 



The Cross. 47 

feet. Hostile and immiscible tribes felt the influence of 
bonds of sympathy and union. Men were taught the 
majesty of law and the habit of absolute submission to 
an authority higher than brute strength. They learned 
the first law of all civilization, " obedience to a moral 
power by virtue of a moral force," and at the same time 
the great basis-truth of liberty of conscience, ''that phys- 
ical power has no right to coerce the honest convictions 
of the soul." 

From these rude and chaotic conditions there emerged 
a new form of social life, which was, perhaps, the only 
possible form into which these heterogeneous materials 
could be molded. Yet during the existence of the feudal 
system Christianity increased from fifteen millions to 
fifty millions. Society was in a state of chaotic confu- 
sion, and despite the tyranny of barons and the absence 
of fixed systems of law it afforded a scope and gave op- 
portunity for the influence of a true religion. Then first 
were its teachings as to the social position of women 
properly established ; shut up in his isolated castle the 
solitary baron was forced to depend on his wife and chil- 
dren for sympathy and companionship. So that it is in 
this era that we begin to find the family and the home 
of modern society. The influence of the priest, mediat- 
ing between the haughty lordling and his dependent 
serfs, softened the pride of the one and refined the bar- 
barism of the other, and prepared both for the grand 
events that were to produce new social combinations, 
and extend from the tenth or twelfth to the sixteenth 
century, during which time the number of converts in- 
creased to one hundred millions. These centuries were 
marked by great and influential social upheavals, in which 
Christianity was a conspicuous factor. 



48 Pulpit and Platform. 

One of these, and the first in influence, was the Cru- 
sades. The enthusiastic response to the call for the 
deliverance of the holy sepulcher created a social con- 
vulsion. This mighty and ocean-like movement broke 
up the vast and silent surface of frozen Europe, precipi- 
tated its shivering and massive fragments on the shores 
of the strange and storied East ; but in its reflex tide 
bore back a rich freight of blessing which enlarged na- 
tional conceptions and strengthened national bonds, 
which checked the enormous tyranny of the feudal sys- 
tem, breaking up the overgrown fiefs, and bringing up 
from the serfs that mighty middle class soon to ascend 
the throne of the world. It permitted the creation of free 
cities that served as nurseries for the ideas of liberty, 
that were one day to bring forth fruit more terrible to 
tyrants than the fabled dragon's teeth of Cadmus. It 
cherished into existence a commercial spirit in Southern 
Europe, and evoked with its wand of magic power the 
opulence of Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Venice ; for we owe 
all these to the Crusades, and without Christianity no 
such vast earthquake movements of society could have 
been possible. 

When the spirit of romantic adventure aroused by the 
Crusades could find no other scope in purging the holy 
soil of the sacrilegious Paynim, it demanded some other 
field of extension, either in the cause of virtue or of vice. 
Fortunately for the world it assumed a form which, 
although stilted, pompous, and extravagant, yet con- 
ferred no small blessing on society. The spirit of chiv- 
alry breathed sentiments of high honor and delicate 
courtesy into men's hearts, inspired a disgust and horror 
of perfidy and falsehood, cherished an uncompromising 
hostility to injustice, elevated woman, in society, made 



The Cross. 49 

her oppression and maltreatment to be regarded as bru- 
tality and cowardice, and introduced refinement into the 
intercourse of peace, and humanity and generosity into 
the contests of war. Chivalry allied itself to Christian- 
ity, drew its laws and sanctions from the precepts of the 
Gospel, hallowed its knightly investitures and tourna- 
ments with religious ceremonies, and thus aided in infus- 
ing the principles of religion into the heart of society. 

During this period Christianity was gradually infusing 
more justice and humanity into the jurisprudence of 
Europe. In the barbarian and feudal period, law in civil 
courts was either a chance medley or a hideous mockery, 
according to the caprice of its dispensers. In ecclesias- 
tical courts, however, a regular system of judicial pro- 
cedure, under the name of canon law, extracted partly 
from the Roman law and partly from the Gospel, was 
gradually introduced and extended to all who were 
called " clerici." So that the phrase, " benefit of clergy," 
now so unmeaning, had then a deep significance, since to 
be tried in an ecclesiastical court was to be tried by at 
least forms of law, with the power of appeal to a higher 
tribunal. 

Christianity also used its influence for the gradual ex- 
tinction of slavery. The first voice against the system 
was raised in the Church, and the strongest motives im- 
pelling to its final overthrow were drawn from the free 
and equalizing spirit of the Bible. Most of the deeds of 
manumission granted prior to the time of Louis X and 
Philip the Long, when slavery was abolished in France, 
were given in express terms, "pro amove dei" "pro reme- 
dio anim<z" and "pro mercede animce" 

Christianity also lent its aid in the extinction of the 
barbarous custom of private w r ar, which the genius and 
4 



50 Pulpit and Platform. 

power of Charlemagne were found inadequate to sup- 
press. 

Whatever of learning existed during this long period 
was found in the Christian Church. In the monasteries 
and holy places were kept safe from the sweeping ravages 
of barbarism and ignorance the relics of classic lore, 
which in less sacred depositories were sacrificed to a fero- 
cious and indiscriminate thirst for destruction. Scho- 
lastic philosophy was solely employed on the facts and 
doctrines of revelation, and Christianity gradually pro- 
cured the creation of universities and colleges, and thus 
began the great work of training the universal mind, 
which has since resulted in the magnificent apparatus of 
modern education. For there is not a college or univer- 
sity of any note in Europe — nor, indeed, are the excep- 
tions many anywhere — that was not founded directly by 
Christianity, founded as an eleemosynary institution and 
directly from religious motives. 

Hence when the race began to awaken to a new activity 
and was quickened by the discovery of printing, by the 
change of national and social relations produced by the 
use of gunpowder and cannon in warfare, by the terrible 
irruption of the fierce and turbaned hordes of Tartary, 
by the fall of Constantinople and the consequent disper- 
sion of the treasures of Grecian lore there collected, by 
the discovery of a new continent and of a new passage 
to an old one ; and when, as the result of this general 
resurrection of the intellect of Europe, learning began 
to flourish, most of its protectors and patrons prized it 
mainly as a handmaid to religion. Darkness had, in- 
deed, covered the earth, and gross darkness the people, 
a slumber of centuries had enveloped the world ; but 
trains that had been silently preparing in the deep 



The Cross. 51 

and slumbering night of the past now flamed out in 
a conflagration that proved to be a beacon-fire to the 
world. 

At this sacred flame science, literature, and art, in all 
their forms, have lit their ten thousand torches, the light 
of which now blazes around us, to the four hundred and 
ten million nine hundred thousand Christians who now 
occupy three fifths of the territorial area of the globe, 
and rejoice in its highest and purest civilization. For 
these possess the physical power of the race ; these na- 
tions protect their humblest citizens by the authority of 
their flags ; these control the commerce, the growing 
wealth, the productive capital of the world ; these make 
the only improvements and discoveries in machinery, 
art, manufactures; these establish universities, endow 
colleges, and enjoy common schools ; these possess the 
profoundest philosophy, the loftiest science, the finest 
literature, the most active intellects; these maintain 
hospitals and asylums for the relief of the wretched 
and unfortunate ; these dwell under constitutional gov- 
ernments, where life, property, and reputation are invio- 
late, where rights are defined, liberty enjoyed, laws 
wisely enacted and administered. These make the 
earth to rejoice and blossom as the rose, and constitute 
it a fit home for immortals on the way to heaven. 

Such are some of the indirect influences which Chris- 
tianity exerts. Sent to the world to bless and to en- 
lighten it with reference to eternal things and issues, it 
has brought all temporal blessings and gifts, and carries 
in its train, as it moves heavenward, all charities and 
gifts which adorn and bless the earth. As a river rolling 
to the ocean bears not only its own current to the sea, 
but spreads on all its banks freshness and verdure, so 



52 Pulpit and Platform. 

does Christianity, in bringing rebellious man to God, 
spread life and light and blessing everywhere. 

There is not an element of social prosperity which it 
does not directly or indirectly foster ; there is not a sin- 
gle bane of national, social, or individual weal which it 
does not discourage ; it brings to the work of fostering 
the one and destroying the other an influence mightier 
than the shifting expedients of politicians or the bluster- 
ing bravado of warriors ; it enforces its salutary com- 
mands and restrictions with the most tremendous sanc- 
tions, and with motives which loom up in their trenchant 
and terrible might from the dark abyss of eternity. 

Its influence has been eminently salutary and conserv- 
ative during the different periods of modern civilization. 
As was said of Ceres, the grass has grown greener under 
its footsteps, until now the nations which enjoy its in- 
fluence in anything like fullness are as the land of 
Goshen, mantled with light, w r hile others are shrouded 
in darkness; or, like Gideon's fleece, are visited with the 
dew of prosperity, while others are cursed with aridity 
and death. 

As there is no other cause which adequately explains 
these marked distinctions we are at liberty to conclude, 
nay, we are forced to believe, that Christianity is the one 
grand agency appointed for the renovation of the world, 
in time as well as in eternity. The world may be able to 
do without our science and our art and our literatures ; it 
may invent or discover others adapted to its use ; it 
may outgrow our forms of government and modify our 
laws; it may adjust itself to other social forms and 
usages; all this is possible, but it cannot do without our 
religion ; that must be its abiding as it is its only hope. 

The broad ocean of time is covered with the wrecks 



The Cross. 53 

of human hopes. Century after century has witnessed 
tides of upheaval, decade after decade has known storm 
and tempest. One after another imaginations and high 
things which have exalted themselves against the knowl- 
edge of God have gone down, until progress guides its 
way amid the floating failures of the past. Fair fabrics 
freighted with anticipated security have been shattered 
and have fallen ; they are known to us only as their frag- 
ments are cast up upon the sands. Out of this ocean 
there rises a great rock, whose foundations are in God's 
eternal purpose, and whose towering crags are God's 
achieved plans. Storms have beaten upon it, floods have 
dashed themselves to harmless spray around its base, but 
no wave has damaged, no flood has made it insecure. 
Midway upon its giant breast, planted in its great cleft, 
is the Cross, over which the bending heavens come down 
in loving tenderness. It is secure. Hell's terrors have 
wasted their impotent wrath against it, earth's trials 
have all failed to move its steadfastness. It has borne 
the weight of the world's sin ; it has upheld the dying 
Son of God. " At its base time must molder, around 
its brow eternity must play." 



JOHN'S QUESTION AND CHRIST'S ANSWER. 

Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent 
two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do 
we look for another ? Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show 
John again those things which ye do hear and see. — Matt, xi, 2-4. 

We have here John's question and Christ's answer. 
To rightly comprehend either we must understand the 
circumstances in which they were placed. At Machaerus, 
in the castle known as the " diadem," from its crown-like 
seat on the lofty rocks overlooking the Dead Sea and 
the Jordan, lay as prisoner the man whose burning 
words had stirred the whole kingdom, and whose brief 
but aggressive ministry had roused the intensest expecta- 
tion of the people. He had appeared as a prophet, in- 
flaming the people by his zeal, and, being " much more 
than a prophet," had lifted up his voice as the imme- 
diate messenger before the face of God 's Anointed, to 
prepare his way. 

What we learn of his appearance is sufficient to arrest 
attention. His spare form, attenuated by meager food 
and austerity ; his bright Jewish eyes, full of the living 
energy that burned within ; his long hair, uncut for thirty 
years, the mark of Nazarite consecration ; his rough hair- 
cloth garment and his coarse leathern girdle, made him 
the picture of one of the ancient prophets. The Scrip- 
tures describe the greatest of the prophets, Elijah the 
Tishbite, whom all expected to reappear before the Mes- 
siah, in exactly such a guise as John presented (2 Kings 



John's Question and Christ's Answer. 55 

i, 8) ; he is described as " a hairy man, and girt with a 
girdle of leather about his loins." 

A second Elijah in spirit as well as in appearance, 
and, like him, witnessing in evil times, his message was 
one of wrath ; his call was to repentance, a voice of prep- 
aration. The truth which he came to proclaim was 
higher than man ; his sentences strike swift and glitter- 
ing, like lightning flashes amid the roll of judgment-day 
thunders. Each sentence is vivid with bold pictures 
drawn from nature and life. He compares Israel to a 
barren fruit tree. The next moment Israel is a great 
threshing-floor, and the winnowing fan is at hand to 
cleanse it thoroughly. He points all away from himself 
to one mightier, yet at hand. The terrors of the day of 
wrath rolled over his hearers as his foremost thought, 
sounds of hope broke in like soft music only at intervals 
to keep the contrite from despair. 

This " greatest born of women " had incurred a 
woman's hate, and was now a prisoner, and his life was 
to be forfeited to her hellish plots. This man from his 
prison sends his disciples to Christ with the question, 
" Art thou he that should come, or do we look for 
another?" 

Various theories have been suggested as explanations 
of this course. Prominent among these is the idea that 
strong, bold, and fervid as he had proved to be in his 
active ministry, his spirit had been broken by his misfor- 
tunes, and that he had become depressed by his imprison- 
ment, and doubt had seized him in a moment of tempo- 
rary despondency. But however much we may look to 
the weakening effect of confinement upon ordinary charac- 
ters I cannot believe that this man was subject to this 
infirmity. He had not been very long in confinement, 



56 Pulpit and Platform. 

and, moreover, he had witnessed the most marked con- 
firmation of things divine and human in the case of Christ. 
He could not have been weakened into doubt concerning 
one of whom he had spoken as " greater than himself; " 
as one for whom he was ready to perform the slave-boy's 
office of unloosing his sandal latchets ; of one to whom 
he had applied the sublime Messianic picture of Isaiah 
as " Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world ; " and of one to whom he had administered the 
formal consecration which marked his entrance on his 
new office, which consecration had been attested by the 
vision of the descending clove and the voice from heaven 
saying, " This is my beloved Son." No, I cannot believe 
that after all this John doubted for an instant whether 
this was he that was to come, or for a moment fancied 
that he was yet to look for another. 

Think of the character of the man. Edward Irving, in 
his eloquent lecture on the Baptist, asks, " What to him 
was a scowling Pharisee, or a mocking Sadducee, or a 
fawning publican, or a rough soldier, or a riotous mob ? 
These were jocund, cheerful sights to one who had 
roamed amongst the wild beasts of the desert, and in 
the midst of them laid down his head under no canopy, 
and with no defense but the canopy of the heavens and 
the defense of the providence of the Most High. Around 
a man who can despise accommodations and conven- 
iences, and deal with nature in ancient simplicity and in- 
dependence, and move amongst her social and religious 
institutions like a traveler from another world, free to 
judge and censure and approve, as having himself noth- 
ing at stake — around such a man there is a moral grand- 
eur and authority to which none but the narrowest and 
most bicoted minds will refuse a certain awe and rcver- 



John's Question and Christ's Answer. 



D/ 



ence." Such a man, with such historic proofs behind 
him, did not bend like a reed " shaken in the wind " be- 
fore the blast of adversity, nor quail into doubt as "men 
clothed in soft raiment" might have done. 

A more likely supposition is that he may have felt im- 
patient at the delay of Christ's manifestation of himself 
as the promised Messiah, and have sent the message as 
though to spur him to endeavor and to urge him to pre- 
cipitancy. 

If there is any justice in supposing that the embassy 
was sent with any personal reference to John himself, this 
seems to me the most probable. For here was a bold 
enthusiast, who had been seized with a prophetic con- 
sciousness of the nearness of the Messiah ; who had looked 
and longed for and recognized him, who had been the 
appointed instrument of inducting him to his high and 
holy work. He might in his prison have become im- 
patient for the splendid realization which he knew was 
just before the world, and have longed to take part in it. 
For it is the especial greatness of John that he not only 
rose to the level of so great an enterprise as the spiritual 
regeneration of his country, and devoted himself to it 
with gigantic energy, and that he was a man of spotless 
truth and dauntless courage ; but that, with all this, he 
was filled with a splendid enthusiasm and unfaltering 
faith in the nearness of the Messiah. This alone could 
have supported him under the burden of his work. No 
one till then had stood, as he" did, between the dead past 
and the dimly rising future in hopeful and confident ex- 
pectation. He had led the people from the corruption, 
wickedness, and confusion of their decayed religiousness, 
and stood calmly and grandly at their head, in the firm 
belief that the Messiah, who only could realize the prom- 



58 Pulpit and Platform. 

ises he had made them of divine help toward a higher 
life, would emerge from the darkness before him. In 
such an attitude of intensest expectancy he must have 
longed for the full demonstration of all he believed to be 
coming, and have felt in his bonds the shackling of a 
world's hope. He may have been impatient of the seem- 
ing delay. He was not at liberty to follow the footsteps 
of Jesus, hear his words, see his miracles, and point to 
them as convincing proofs of his own unerring discern- 
ment. He may have heard but little there in Machaerus 
of what was passing in Judea ; he had heard, probably, 
of the healing of the centurion's servant and of the young 
man raised from the bier at Nain ; but there was no word 
of any open assumption of the office of Messiah, nor any 
signs of the approaching erection of a purified theocracy. 
There were no preparations for the triumph of Israel, 
and no symptoms of the wrath of God breaking out on 
their oppressors. He who had prophesied these things 
as proofs that the kingdom of God was at hand was a 
helpless prisoner. Did he send his disciples to quicken 
the activity and hasten the assumption of authority on 
the part of Christ ? 

I confess that it would not lower my high estimate of 
the man if this were true ; and yet I think a third sug- 
gestion much more probable, namely, that this man, in 
the nobility of his self-renunciation, found that his 
disciples needed weaning from himself; that their per- 
sonal attachment was warping their judgment, causing 
them to enter into captious criticisms concerning the 
conduct of Christ's disciples in the matter of ceremonial 
observances, and thus dwarfing their conceptions of the 
real glory and power of Christ It was probably to 
enable them, by personal contact with Christ, through 



John's Question and Christ's Answer. 59 

his introduction, and as his messengers, to see the greater 
glory of Christ, who was " to increase, while he was to 
decrease : " to put them in the way of recognizing him 
who was "not to baptize with water," but " with the Holy 
Ghost, and with fire," so that they might realize the 
"one in the midst" "greater than" their leader, and be 
attracted to him with stronger ties than they had felt 
uniting them to their now imprisoned leader. For there 
was danger that the disciples of John, in their blind 
partisanship, would be absorbed by the herald, and not see 
the greater dignity of him whom, as herald, he proclaimed 
— should be so charmed by the " voice of one crying in 
the wilderness " as to neglect preparing " the way of the 
Lord," whose speedy coming he announced. And so, 
when they came with their message, " in that same hour 
he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of 
evil spirits ; and unto many that were blind he gave 
sight." And then he said, " Go and show John those 
things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their 
sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and 
the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have 
the gospel preached to them ; " and he added, as if to 
warn them not to look away to another, " Blessed is he, 
whosoever shall not be offended in me," the whole 
answer showing a fulfillment of the words of Isaiah re- 
specting the Messiah, which must have sunk deep into 
the heart of one to whom that great prophet was an 
anticipatory gospel. John would remember and would 
not fail to impress on his disciples that in one place 
(Isa. xxxv, 4, 5, 6), " Your God will come . . . and save you. 
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of 
the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man 
leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing;" and 



60 Pulpit and Platform. 

that in another place Isaiah had said (Isa. lxi, I, 2), 
" The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the 
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the 
meek ; ... to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim 
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison 
to them that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable 
year of the Lord." Jesus could have given John no 
better text from which to demonstrate to his disciples, 
his faltering followers, that he was indeed the Messiah. 

Let us now consider Christ's answer in reference to 
some lessons it may have for us. We have seen what 
it was for the disciples of John. But it was not for them 
alone. 

It is to be noted that Christ gave a practical and 
not a theoretical answer. He did not appeal to the 
ancient prophetic record and show how literally it was 
being fulfilled by him. But he did the works antic- 
ipated by the record and let the facts speak for 
themselves. His answer was in effect, and almost in 
words, " Go and show John what I have done, believe 
me for the very works' sake." These works or facts 
were twofold : First, there were the miraculous cures he 
performed ; and, secondly, there was that marvelous new 
principle which he was introducing. 

Of the miracles, we too may speak as outward con- 
firmation of his divine authority, such as we might in 
advance believe would attest the dignity of a divine 
visitant. If God should come to the world we should 
expect him to do such wonders as were beyond human 
power and skill. And expectation in this direction had 
been roused, and men were looking to just such acts as 
credentials in the case of whoever might be sent. Mira- 
cles had attended previous communications by messen- 



John's Question and Christ's Answer. 6i 

gers. Moses had been installed in the confidence of the 
Hebrew serfs by the wonders wrought with his shep- 
herd's crook, which on one occasion became a serpent, on 
another evoked from heaven at the same time fire and 
ice, which pointed the way to the desert, opened the 
path through the sea, and brought water out of the dry 
rock. Elijah had done wonders of healing, and, as we 
have seen, the prophets had authorized the belief that 
Messiah, when he should come, would do mightier deeds 
than these. If we looked to see the Creator among his 
creatures we should feel no wonder when the processes 
of nature were condensed from a vintage season to the 
hour of a marriage feast, and wine, instead of maturing 
through grape and press and vat, blushed in the water- 
pots standing for purification. The miracles were super- 
natural, in that the ordinary processes of nature were in- 
stantaneously made to result without the delay of action 
required by the working of the laws impressed on nature 
as her usual methods. So sight came to the blind by 
touch or word or by anointing, instead of by surgical 
skill, as proving that he who formed the eye could pour 
vision into the orb he had fitted for its use. 

All of Christ's credential miracles were, however, as 
merciful in their kind as they were supernatural in their 
character. They were wrought on an afflicted class, on 
the sufferers of our humanity, the blind, the lame, the 
deaf, the diseased, the dead. He, in this sense, wonder- 
fully " bore our griefs and carried our sorrows," and he 
made use of his power only to relieve human suffering 
and alleviate human sorrow. Thus all his works have 
an adaptation to our spiritual needs as well. Sin's lep- 
rosy is removable as surely as bodily disease is curable. 
Intellectual blindness may be removed so that with the 



62 Pulpit and Platform. 

falling scales of prejudice we may see rightly. Moral 
insensibility to the calls of duty and distress may be re- 
moved by the power which makes the deaf ear stir in its 
convoluted chambers to the call of sound. The immo- 
bility of death may be shaken from souls so that, starting 
into new life, they may serve God, who quickens and 
renews the life-giving spirit. 

Beautifully does the reliever of physical infirmity adapt 
his credential-proving works to such lines of disability as 
pertain alike to spiritual and bodily privations and af- 
flictions, so that when we see and believe him as accred- 
ited we find that we have laid hold on " One mighty to 
save, strong to deliver," from every form of evil. 

But not less interesting than these marvelous works 
was the new principle he was introducing, and to which 
he called special attention, " The poor have the gospel 
preached to them." It had not been so before; the 
haughty Pharisees and the bigoted scribes had despised 
the poor, and even pointed their self-laudatory prayers by 
thanking God " they were not as the publicans." But while 
all classes of men slighted them, and all, even of the re- 
ligionists of the day, looked down on them, Christ saw 
in them their value as men, as heirs of immortality. 
And so he identified himself with their interests, associ- 
ated himself with them in companionship, and made the 
toiling masses feel that he understood them and was 
their friend and benefactor. He selected this class as 
illustration of his claim to be " heir of all things," " him 
that should come ; " for it linked him in at once with the 
universal sympathy of the race; it was, on his part, a 
declaration of a new principle of human power. Here 
was the recognition of the dignity and responsibility of 
man as man, apart from the fictitious distinctions of 



John's Question and Christ's Answer. 63 

wealth or lineage ; of man, the individual, however pre- 
viously neglected, however degraded or fallen, however 
ignorant and unskilled ; of man, because originally made 
in the image of God, and still capable of restoration to 
his favor and of becoming an heir of his throne. 

It was a new and bold assertion of a deep spiritual 
and social truth that the masses, who had been regarded 
by monarchs and philosophers alike as only burden- 
bearers and toilers, were of personal worth and dignity, 
and, as constituting the greater part of humanity, were 
to be looked to as the conservers of society, the strength 
of nations, the working force in God's earthly plan and 
purpose. So he touched the toil-worn hand and raised 
the owner to the dignity of citizenship in the kingdom 
of God. He did not avoid contact with rags and wretch- 
edness, but wherever he met them he changed them into 
garments of praise. He took away the ignominy of 
labor, and at the voice of his Gospel serfs, bondsmen, 
and all laborers looked up and smiled; gladness came 
where he taught that in each man was the germ of an 
infinite possibility, and that the chances of earthly lots 
and positions were no basis for discrimination as against 
souls; that time's distinctions all faded into nothing- 
ness when viewed in the light of eternity. The poor 
had this Gospel, this good news, preached to them, and 
thereby were made aspirants to, and heirs of, heaven. 

The Gospel was not an outward carnal form, but an 
inward spiritual power ; and the Christian life for us, as 
well as for John's disciples, must be grounded on facts, 
which are of record, as the basis for credence, and are to 
be received as attestations of the Messiahship of him who 
wrought them. They must not be causes of offense, for 
the blessing is to him " who is not offended in him.'* 



64 Pulpit and Platform. 

True, his poverty of life offends the pride of many, even 
as his doctrines aroused their prejudices and his pure 
life condemned their selfishness, their lust, their worldli- 
ness ; but we must have such insight into his history, 
such living faith in his principles, such thorough sympa- 
thy with his spirit, such vital identification with his doc- 
trines, doings, and destiny as not to be offended in him. 

When we see undoubted spiritual facts which we 
cannot explain — such as the instantaneous conversion of 
sinners, the enlargement of the believer's experience into 
clear spiritual perception of light and rest — we are not 
to be offended, but to accept as facts what demonstrate 
themselves to be facts, and not allow our prejudices of 
education, or personal antipathy, or narrow individual 
experience to lead us to doubt, but that he who healed 
all manner of sicknesses, in all kinds of people, can ex- 
ceed our expectations when he saves from sin. 

The embassy of John's disciples was an event of great 
import both to them and to us, for we may learn from 
it the true method of answering and dispelling doubt. 
There are many phases which doubting minds assume. 
There are honest skeptics as well as indifferent rejecters 
of the truth, and there are false methods of struggling 
with honest doubt. One of these false methods is the 
resort to abstract reasoning. We forget that the truths 
of salvation are spiritual truths, and as such are to be 
spiritually discerned. They are not human discoveries, 
but revelations. As human discoveries they would lie 
in the plane of the reason and be susceptible of philo- 
sophic and scientific tests. But they are not the results 
of human speculation, they are objects of faith ; and faith 
is the spiritual faculty which corresponds to reason 
among the intellectual faculties. Reason enables us to 



John's Question and Christ's Answer. 65 

conceive truth, faith enables us to perceive it. It is an 
intuitive perception of existing spiritual facts, or expe- 
riences, which appeals directly to the personal conscious- 
ness without the intervention of the reasoning faculty, 
and therefore argument, though it may illustrate and 
confirm this testimony, never can be a substitute for it. 
Hence to argue about an unknown and unrealized expe- 
rience would be folly, because the facts on which it 
would rest could not be appreciated as a basis for an 
argument. They are apprehended by the spiritual in- 
tuition which we call faith ; and only one who can reach 
the spirit in us, without media of approach, could so in- 
fluence our state as to change our consciousness. God, 
who is a spirit, alone can thus touch those whom he has 
endowed with spirit, and give them " the witness in 
themselves." Argument will not solve other than intel- 
lectual doubt. It is not on the plane of spiritual things, 
which must be spiritually discerned. 

Another false method of treating honest doubt is to 
consult theological opinions. This is flying to human 
instead of to divine help and authority. Our theological 
systems are valuable as compilations and digests of what 
men have thought of religion ; they are not religion any 
more than the science of electricity is lightning, or the 
science of optics is light. They are human treatises 
concerning God. What men in doubt need is, not what 
other men think and believe about God, but what God 
is to them and to their condition. This is to be arrived 
at by asking God, not by inquiring of philosophers ; and 
to be answered by God himself, and not by his human 
interpreters. John showed a true logical discernment of 
the needs of his followers when he sent them to Christ, 
and not to the scribes and the rabbis, learned as they 
5 



66 Pulpit and Platform. 

were, and bade them ask, not " What think ye of 
Christ?" but to put the direct question to the Master, 
" Art thou he that should come ? " 

While we thus learn how to deal with honest doubt, 
we also learn another lesson of equal importance, namely, 
how to avoid doubt. Christ suggested this when, after 
calling attention to his spiritual power in merciful relief 
of human suffering, he added, as a proof beyond question, 
the fact that he was preaching to the poor. This lets us 
into the secret that work for the poor leaves neither time 
nor room for the entrance of doubt. I speak not of that 
godless charity which merely distributes its superabun- 
dance, but of the charity which regards the highest inter- 
ests of men as related to God. What insight into the 
value of a man as man Christ's words give ! 

And he has so arranged the laws of his spiritual kingdom 
that we derive our highest good, not from what we do for 
ourselves, but from what we do for others, making clear the 
enigmatic expression, " It is more blessed to give than to 
receive." We get by giving, we receive by imparting, and 
to the heart attent on helping others there is no fear of 
doubts. The busy hand, the preoccupied mind, intent 
on preaching by example, word, and gift, lives girt about 
with coat of mail, through which doubt may not enter, 
and the joints of whose harness distrust may not pene- 
trate. If we would solve doubts, take them to Christ ; if 
we would avoid doubts, work for Christ's poor. 



THANKSGIVING. 

He hath not dealt so with any nation : and as for his judgments, they 
have not known them. Praise ye the Lord. — Psalm cxlvii, 20. 

ROMANCE records marvels. History registers facts. 
But romance narrates few marvels more wonderful than 
the facts recorded in history which order the celebration 
of this year. The discovery of the American continent 
resulted from an act of heroism and undaunted persist- 
ence. The settlement of the discovered continent was 
made by daring and determined men, impelled by am- 
bitious hopes. The development of the continent thus 
discovered and settled has been worthy of the spirit and 
the principles which aided in its inception. 

The inhabitants of all the colonies were impelled by 
an adventurous spirit which both fitted them for the 
subjugation of the wilds of the forest and sustained them 
in the trials to which they were exposed. They all early 
manifested that impatience of control, that spirit of 
independent thought and action which in their descend- 
ants shaped the destinies of the nation whose early 
foundations they laid. But the colonists of New Eng- 
land, who have largely influenced our destinies, were 
men whose aspirations for freedom drove them from 
their homes. As of all the colonists, so especially of 
the Puritans, there was much in their character that 
was unlovely, much in their history that requires apol- 
ogy, but they were sincere in their devotion, honest 
in their patriotism, and devout in their piety. The 



6$ Pulpit and Platform. 

principles they brought with them took root in the soil, 
and became incorporate in our national character and 
polity. 

The continued exactions of the English government 
gave opportunity for the discussion of the most momen- 
tous political question ever decided. And when our 
fathers assembled a century ago for this purpose they 
were the representatives of the people, not only by selec- 
tion but by fitness also. They came from every quarter 
and were characterized by every variety of genius. 
There were Hancock and Adams, Sherman and Living- 
ston, Carroll and Jefferson, and their illustrious com- 
peers, representatives from every latitude and longitude 
then embraced in our territories. In the debate that 
preceded the adoption of the Constitution the most ab- 
stract truths were uttered — truths which transcend rea- 
son and carry demonstration in their statement — and 
these men wrote down as the basis of their enterprise, 
to be read of all nations, and to descend to all posterity 
as fundamental truths, " Men are born free and equal." 
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed." 

The republics of antiquity furnished them with but 
few landmarks to guide their deliberations. Still they 
had done something. The Grecian states had demon- 
strated the possibility of that grand postulate of all demo- 
cratic rule — that power might ascend from the people 
and be delegated for limited periods and specific pur- 
poses to a government whose officers should be the serv- 
antsof the people. But the limited scale of the experiment, 
and its not altogether satisfactory results, warned against 
rather than encouraged its repetition. It had run its 
brief career and fulfilled the prophecy of its enemies by 



Thanksgiving. 69 

ending in agrarianism, which divided all the property, 
and ostracism, which banished all the talent ; in short, 
in a low leveling envy which would enrich every man 
who was superior to the masses, either by the splendor 
of his natural endowments or the extent of his posses- 
sions. 

That grand republic which began its career on the banks 
of the Tiber, and preserved its integrity until it had mas- 
tered the civilized world, had shown that magistracy need 
not always rest in a hereditary caste, but that there is a 
sovereignty independent of a privileged order or a royal 
family. But the final winding up of the republic into a 
military despotism had involved the whole question of 
permanent freedom in perplexing doubt. 

In the men of American independence these principles 
were born again, and uttered as an ultimate possibility for 
the race. But this might have been a mere flourish of 
words, a string of glittering generalities, had there been 
in that assembly only the jurists, philosophers, and or- 
ators of the age. There were present also men who had 
endured toil and hard experiences with adversities and 
practical duties ; men whose hands were hard with labor, 
whose sinews had been strengthened by work, whose 
dress was plain and homely, but whose nerves knew not 
how to tremble. These gave robustness, compactness, 
and consolidated strength ; made the grand theories 
practical, and all alike pledged life, fortune, and sacred 
honor on the issue. Knowing well the risks they ran, 
seeing clearly the glory in view, they girded themselves 
to the great task, and were ready to vindicate on the 
field what they had declared in the council chamber. 
They counted the cost, they measured their strength, 
they ventured to oppose to an old and powerful kingdom 



70 Pulpit and Platform. 

bent on enforcing a wrong; the untried energies of youth 
impelled by the imponderable forces of freedom. The 
struggle was firm and long, but the elasticity of freedom 
ever rose up under the mountains of difficulty heaped 
upon it, and in every emergency patriotism had some 
new sacrifice to offer. During the struggle the republic 
was born, and in the conflict " nursed her mighty 
youth." In the Constitution the personal rights of in- 
dividuals were guaranteed, and the personal obligations 
of men were asserted, for the government was " of the 
people, by the people, for the people ; " it was purely 
elective and representative ; no provision was made for 
hereditary legislation ; no place was found for the absurd 
claims of legitimacy and divine rights which had been 
advanced in the Dark Ages. This was a new departure. 
Never before our own has there been an instance of a 
purely elective and representative system. 

That Constitution, adopted in 1787, has worked well. 
As necessity has demanded, fifteen amendments only 
have been ratified by the several States ; ten of these 
were proposed at the first session of the first Congress, 
in 1789, one in 1794, another in 1803; these twelve be- 
came part of the national Constitution. The Thirteenth 
Amendment was adopted in 1865, and the Fourteenth in 
1868, to give it efficiency, and the Fifteenth in 1870. 

Meanwhile the nation has grown and developed be- 
yond all precedent, and the wisdom and inspiration of 
the document appear in their adaptation to all the ex- 
igencies of a rapidly developing civilization. We then 
had less than three millions of people ; their homes, ex- 
tending from New Hampshire to Georgia, were bounded 
on the west by the Allegheny Mountains. Beyond that 
range were only military or trading posts, chief among 



Thanksgiving. 71 

which were Pittsburg and what is now Louisville. An 
English fort, called Sackville, stood on the banks of the 
Wabash, and the only settlement in Illinois was a French 
fort with an English governor. 'All the South which 
fronts on the Gulf of Mexico and all west of the Missis- 
sippi River belonged, by title, to European powers, but 
was in disputed possession of the aborigines. Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston were 
scarcely more than villages. Albany, in New York, 
Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, Frederick, in Maryland, and 
Winchester, in Virginia, were mere frontier hamlets. 
Manufactories scarcely existed. The women whirled 
their spinning wheels or plied the shuttle in the loom 
in almost every house, while the ax and plow were the 
tools of nearly all of the men. Coasting smacks, with a 
few ships from Europe and the West Indies, carried 
the only commerce. New England had a few schools 
and four colleges. 

With such a history and under such a Constitution 
we entered on our national life. From a feeble begin- 
ning we developed power and stability ; our Constitution 
a compact of union ; our history from Plymouth Rock 
to Jamestown a creditable history ; our prosperity in art 
and manufactures the result of honest enterprise ; our 
commerce visiting all seas and lands. Our prestige 
among the nations was that of a growing people, backed 
by wonderful resources. The promise of ultimate tri- 
umph was foretold in the swelling grandeur of our 
spreading civilization, which followed the rivers, dotted 
the prairies, and crowned the mountains of our hemi- 
sphere. The Old World was rousing from the sleep of 
ages to behold our quickening life, and embassies from 
distant lands were gazing on us with wonder. They 



72 Pulpit and Platform. 

were told of our schools and churches, of our marts of 
trade, of rivers which bore the sustenance of nations on 
their sweeping currents, of our mines of precious metals, 
the richest in the world, which pour their streams into 
the currency of the world ; for the images of all the 
monarchs of civilized nations and of the kings of bar- 
baric nations are stamped upon gold and silver dug 
from our soil. They heard of our immense harvests, 
equal to the wants of the world, which we gathered 
from regions of the highest fertility, stretching through 
five and twenty degrees of latitude. They heard of 
the inventive skill of our countrymen in a thousand 
departments of industry. We were fast assuming a 
proud position. But the rapidity of our growth had 
blinded us to forgetfulness of our defects ; our pride 
in the present had made us forgetful of the facts of 
our past. We spoke of heroic deeds, but referred 
them to a former time, and our heroes were those of 
a former generation, still living among us with pro- 
longed lives. The deeds of other times needed to be 
repeated in our persons to bring us back to the dignity 
of our birth and destiny. We were becoming local and 
sectional instead of national ; mutual respect for men 
of different nations had to be achieved upon the battle- 
field. 

We had gone so far away from the doctrine of our 
Declaration of Independence as to make large invest- 
ments in each other, and instead of rights inalienable 
had produced a class having no rights which others were 
bound to respect. By the inevitable laws of retribution 
we were to be chastened ; the issues of prosperity met 
with a check ; the prophecy of peace was not fulfilled. 
There came a crisis in our destiny, but even as moun- 



Thanksgiving 73 

tains are rock-ribbed and abiding because the earth- 
quake has settled them on their foundations, as the pines 
which crest them like a coronet withstand the rudest 
storms because they have been rooted by the blasts 
which toss their giant branches, even so universal free- 
dom was to be made sure by the passing turbulence of 
a rebellion, and a new possibility established in the rude 
blasts of war. 

Ours is not the first nation in which slavery appears 
as an important and irritating factor. In the days of 
the Roman Empire the same policy of subjugation had 
been exercised, and similar results had followed. The 
proportion of slaves to freemen even in the palmy days 
of Rome was greater than it ever became among us ; but 
after Rome armed her slaves in defense of her freemen, 
it became necessary to free her slaves to prevent the 
subjugation of her freemen. The consolidation of our 
government found slavery an existing institution, and 
without formally recognizing it by title the Constitution 
was interpreted so as to cover its results. Our fathers 
made no aggression upon its territory nor assaults upon 
its facts. Had they made no concessions for its pro- 
tection slavery would have died out. But concessions 
had been made, slavery had increased, both in its pro- 
portions and in its demands. Not content with the posi- 
tion assigned it by the founders of the republic, as an 
existing but temporary evil, it claimed to be permanent 
as well as existent, a good instead of an evil. 

By the insanity of its friends the moment had come 
for the readjustment of the great balance. In the one 
scale were the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
stitution and freedom, with its compromises. In the 
other were slavery, aristocracy, secession, and rebellion, 



74 Pulpit and Platform. 

and these were weighing down the beam. The oppor- 
tunity came for final settlement, and the eyes of the 
world were watching the issue. 

The large-hearted men of the world and the toiling 
masses were aghast with fear. But President Lincoln 
had the opportunity, and used it. Compelled to draw 
the sword, he first displaced from over the Constitution 
the concessions, stipulations, and compromises which 
misinterpreted it, and then filled up the scale with a 
million of armed men ; the world had hope again, the 
heart of humanity beat free, and liberty was reassured. 

It seemed like an inspiration to beholders, but it was 
the result of a long series of progressive movements that 
must move slowly that their results might be made sure. 
It was a work almost more than human, for the black 
man crouched upon the earth of whose dust he had been 
formed, and Abraham Lincoln breathed upon him the 
breath of liberty, and the slave rose up a free man with 
a living soul. 

During the presidency of Abraham Lincoln we passed 
through great and severe trials, and in such a manner as 
to defeat the prophecy of our enemies and more than 
realize the hopes of our friends. A long and terrible 
civil war has been triumphantly terminated. It was 
long, because Americans fought on both sides ; it was 
terrible, because of the blood and treasure it consumed. 
But it was worth all it cost, for it cast the apple of 
discord into hades and cemented union, and we have 
lived to hear the removal of slavery pronounced a bless- 
ing by the leaders of the rebellion. Our institutions did 
not fail in the testing, but have vindicated the wisdom 
of our fathers, and, like gold tried in the furnace, are 
brighter and purer than before. 



Thanksgiving. 75 

The price of freedom has been paid afresh ; the ransom 
of a nation's life, offered with tears and blood and prayers, 
has been attended by such acts of heroism and self-sacri- 
fices as belittle other wars, and proves that we draw our 
blood " from fathers of war proof." We are as travelers 
who have long been wrapt in mist and been battling 
with tempests. Storm after storm has launched its 
thunderbolts, flood after flood swept over the path ; on 
the one hand the sheer crag lifted itself beyond the eye's 
reach, and on the other yawned a terrible abyss. The 
night watches were counted by the agonizing throbs of a 
nation's heart ; it seemed as if doom had swallowed the 
dawn and the continent had been surrendered to Cim- 
merian darkness. But at last " the rack of envious 
vapors " rolled itself together and disappeared, the sun 
shone out once more, revealing to us that in the elemental 
strife we had gained immeasurably higher ground ; the 
plane of our old history was far below us. The vexing 
and tumultuous questions of the earlier days are shriv r - 
eled into insignificance, and in the wider horizon and 
purer air there rises before the eye as from a lower level 
the future of our land ; it seems " a kingly spirit throned 
among the hills," the girth of his base the measure of 
earthly greatness, but so high the peak that the heavens 
seem his shrine — his crystal habitation. We look about 
us to see what now exists on which to found such proph- 
ecies, and we behold a young, vigorous nation, celebrat- 
ing its centennial. 'Tis the nation that was born in a 
day, that practically has dispossessed Europe of a con- 
tinent ; for from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande it 
is the abode of many peoples who speak one language, 
swear fealty to one political faith, and are sheltered under 
one flacr. 



y6 Pulpit and Platform, 

The lessons it had taught were plainly to be read. 
The first lesson grew out of our necessities. The unex- 
plored continent had to be subjugated and its resources 
developed. 

Early driven by necessities to invent machinery to 
economize both toil and time, these triumphs of toil, 
one after another, gladdened the world, and the men 
who gave them formed a conscious nobility, sustained 
by self-respect and recognized as benefactors by the 
rest. Thus work has had its just meed of praise, and no 
man's hand is avoided because it is horny or his person 
avoided because his clothes are grimy with toil. If we 
have had much necessity, so we have displayed much 
genius for work. Labor has been rewarded, laborers 
are paid, their rights respected ; their achievements arc 
our crown. Of course there has been friction in adjust- 
ing the relations of labor to capital, but perhaps the 
reason why we have not realized the dread scenes of 
communistic revolt lies in the fact that the toilers of 
to-day are the capitalists of to-morrow. And so long as 
this respect for honest industry remains, and the possi- 
bilities for accumulation are so great, this must continue 
to be our defense. Our workingmen have worked intel- 
ligently. All possibilities have been open to each one 
of them ; and so they have wrought skill and taste into 
the products of the loom, strength and beauty in among 
coarser materials, and have not put brain into literature 
only, but mixed it in mortar, beaten it into iron, woven 
it into textile fabrics; with it they have drained mo- 
rasses, bridged rivers, tunneled mountains, and crowned 
the hills until the desert blossoms and the wilderness is 
glad. 

The great rebellion was the adjudication of the vexed 



Thanksgiving. 77 

question of the right of work to wages, which meant 
more than bare necessities, and included the personal 
choice of whom to work for, how long to toil, at what 
industry to be employed, and what remuneration to ac- 
cept in settlement. While this respect for work and 
workingmen continues we shall be free from the enerva- 
tion of idleness and the dissipation of luxurious ease ; 
while the opportunities of honest industry are afforded 
to all men, pauperism will continue to be an exceptionable 
and temporary experience, and its persistent indulgence 
will constitute a crime. 

But besides the respect awarded to labor and the 
wealth accumulated by workingmen, the uses to which 
riches have been put demand attention, and, while in no 
other land have the practical forces of life been so care- 
fully developed, by no nation has physical comfort been 
so well provided for and life made so rich in beautiful 
embellishment and solid satisfaction. As workingmen 
we are neither serfs nor peasants, but free, intelligent, 
and happy; and our land to-day is the home of more 
happy people than the sun ever before shone on. 

Another great lesson which we read in the annals of 
the past is the necessity and the strength of union. 

The colonies conquered freedom by linking themselves 
into a confederation which, being adopted by the origi- 
nal States, was the basis of organic union. No such 
association as existed in early Greece could have an- 
swered the purposes of America. There must be more 
than sympathy and cooperation ; there must be consoli- 
dation and identification of interests. Hence, our union 
is not a mere symbol of national comity and correspond- 
ence; it is the organized form for national life. It 
makes us one people, wherever born, however reared. 



78 Pulpit and Platform. 

The State flag flies below the national emblem ; the 
citizen of any State finds his rights protected and his 
liberties guarded in every portion of our broad domain. 
We are a nation, and we are a predestined unit; our 
mountain ranges stretch from north to south, our great 
rivers water the vales between. An attempt was made 
to sever the backbone of the Alleghenies and cut off the 
sources of the supply of the Mississippi, but it was found 
to be impossible. An attempt was also made to discrimi- 
nate between men born on the soil and men who came 
from abroad to dwell upon it, but the attempt was futile. 
All the geographical structure of the continent, all the in- 
spired utterances of the founders of freedom, all the pro- 
gressive influences of a developing Civilization unite in 
teaching that this land was made for the occupancy of a 
homogeneous people of mingled races. This home of 
aspirations is to achieve the choice hopes of all other lands 
by centering them amid the possibilities of their realiza- 
tion. Weaknesses are to be eliminated, virtues are to be 
consolidated. Rapid transit and instantaneous commu- 
nication obviate the dangers of distance and delay. The 
great heart of the nation may be felt in every pulsation of 
the extremities. Sectional distinctions are to become ob- 
solete. State rivalries are to be but competitions for pre- 
eminent success, and North and South are with Saxon and 
Celt to be obliterated from our vocabulary when we 
stand as American citizens discussing politics ; we are one 
people the continent over, under one law, speaking one 
language, singing one song, and that law, that language, 
and that song is Union. The Union means something 
now for us and for all men. Germans may bring us 
their philosophy, Frenchmen their art, Italians their 
song, Englishmen their conservatism, and of all these 



Thanksgiving. 79 

elements we will make a solvent for fusing our own sec- 
tional differences, and from the crucible there shall come 
forth 

" A union of lakes and a union of lands, - 

A union of States none can sever ; 
A union of hearts and a union of hands, 

And the flag of our Union forever." 

Another lesson plainly taught in our history is the in- 
flexibility of the laws of justice and of retribution. No 
individual, no nation may escape them. Suffering, as a 
sequence or consequence of wrong, so universally and in- 
variably follows, that when calamities occur we do not, as 
did the heathen, suppose the fierce anger of the gods to be 
vindictively inflicted, but, admitting moral governance, 
we seek for explanation in antecedent events. The one 
foul blot on our history was slavery ; wrong in every 
land, here, where we were building a government on the 
idea of individual equality before the law, the wrong 
was crime. The outrages which inevitably follow the 
denial of personal rights did not fail to follow. Women 
were degraded till they were rated as cattle upon stock 
farms in the ratio of productive ability; children were 
ruthlessly deprived of parental care; unrequited toil was 
wrung by the lash from unwilling bondsmen ; a whole 
race was doomed to the ignorance which would endure 
outrage without revolt. Those who profited from these 
wrongs grew wanton, became imperious, and demanded 
not only permission but protection from the law. The 
issue at last was made, and war grew out of the experi- 
ment, not to free black men, but to make white men 
slaves. 

The contest involved the whole nation, and shook it 
from its center to its circumference. Justice and Mercy 



8o Pulpit and Platform. 

contended over our flag — Justice staining its stripes; 
Mercy, with tears from widows, orphans, and loved ones, 
bleaching them white. Justice had sworn that that flag- 
should represent our shame as well as our glory, and 
blood must flow. The farm gave yeomen and the shops 
gave tradesmen ; the manufactories laborers ; commerce 
sent her seamen and her merchants ; professions were 
vacated, and we thought surely we had given enough to 
cancel every wrong ; but, though the nation was bleed- 
ing at every vein, Justice was not satisfied until in the 
halls of the White House there was mourning and the 
chiefest man of all was slain. Then, in that darkness, as 
in Egypt of old — when there was not a house in which 
there was not one dead, not a house, from the hut and 
the cabin to the President's home — in that hour we re- 
called the words of his second inaugural, when he said : 
" Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this 
mighty scourge of war may quickly pass away. Yet, if 
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by 
the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood 
drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn 
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago 
so still it must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord are 
true and righteous altogether.' " 

The fourth great lesson is the need of culture for the 
masses to meet the exigencies of destiny. No nation 
can maintain law, order, and purity without knowledge. 
No republic depending upon the will of the people can 
exist except in anarchy unless law, which is the will of 
the people, is the expression of enlightened opinion. No 
argument is needed to show that virtue and knowledge 
are too closely wedded to admit the possibility of divorce. 



Thanksgiving. 8i 

Our government is founded on the postulate that 
there may be in the mass of the citizens sufficient intel- 
ligence and virtue to make wise laws and execute them 
faithfully. Without this intelligence and virtue the 
elective franchise is not the free spontaneous expres- 
sion of the popular will ; it is only the machinery by 
which designing men elevate themselves to power. 

No substitute can be made for popular intelligence, 
and no apology or excuse should be received for those 
who, on any pretense, would deny it to the masses. 
Even a religion which could not flourish in the light of 
knowledge ought not to be valued as a substitute for 
knowledge. The State may not teach religion, but the 
State must educate its children in all that pertains to 
duty in the world, and it is a cheering thought that just 
as politicians are removing the Bible from the public 
schools the people everywhere are reading and studying 
God's word as they never did before ; and the burden 
thus cast upon them is being fully met, so that the rising 
millions of our countrymen are receiving such an educa- 
tion as was never before bestowed on an equal number 
of the human race. 

Are there no evils to offset this picture? Alas! yes; 
and yet it may charitably be hoped that such evils as we 
have already seen, and others that we fear may come, 
are not peculiar to our system, but incident to it, and 
such as must arise from the general imperfection of 
everything human. Yet it is not to be denied that some 
looking steadily upon these incidental defects have felt 
and expressed fears of the sufficiency of our republican 
institutions. They can only be justified by our continu- 
ing to imitate the style and adopt the theories of aristo- 
cratic governments. The greed of office and the lust for 



82 Pulpit and Platform. 

wealth which were developed among us, especially since 
the conclusion of our civil war, are to be discouraged 
best by a return to the republican simplicity of a former 
day, when offices sought men, not men office, and when 
it was not necessary either to be rich or to be thought 
rich or to appear rich in order properly to discharge all 
the duties of the citizen. 

In this broad land of ours there must be no repetition 
of the theories of lands where the rich are maintained in 
luxurious ease by the bayonet, which drives back the 
many ; no toleration for the feeling that no permanent 
order among men is possible but that of paving stones, 
beaten down and fixed in the earth, over which rank and 
riches roll in triumphant mastery. Nor, on the other 
hand, must there be any assertion of the undemocratic 
pretense that men are not entitled to protection in the 
enjoyment and use of what they have acquired or hold 
in legal possession. The theories of aristocrats and 
communists must alike be set aside if we are to believe 
that men may be free and rise in moral dignity in pro- 
portion as they are free. The century has at least as- 
serted this, and to discard it would be base ingratitude 
to the laws which maintain us and our children in rights 
never before possessed by any people on earth. To 
abandon the principles of our unequaled ancestry would 
show us to be unfit and unworthy to breathe the pure 
air, tread the free soil, strike hands with the free sons, or 
hear the Sabbath bells of a free country. 

Let us be glad to-day that ours is a land so favored 
and so blessed. Let us dwell with patriotic pride on the 
achievements of the past, and look hopefully upon the 
possibilities of the future. Above all things let us re- 
member in devout thanksgiving Him without whose 



Thanksgiving. 83 

favor nothing is possible, who guided our fathers to 
these shores and established them ; for, as was said by 
one of old, " They got not the land in possession by 
their own sword, neither did their own arm save them : 
but thy right hand, and thine arm," thou gavest them the 
victory. Let us praise Him who led our fathers through 
the " great destiny of labor, our long contest with unre- 
claimed nature and uncivilized man, our agony of glory 
the war of Independence, our great victory of peace, the 
formation of the Union, and the establishment of the 
Constitution ; " who chastised us for our faults, but 
continued us in life so that to-day we are a spectacle to 
the world. Filled with high hopes, flushed with suc- 
cesses, we celebrate our annual Thanksgiving. In cities 
full, where the streets throb with the life of trade, in for- 
est shades and prairies vast, where wave the golden har- 
vests, and the " flocks and herds do overmultitude their 
lords; " on the margin of the seas, the haven of ships; 
on lonely mountain sides, where brawny toil reclaims all 
precious things; " earth hutched in her loins on the 
stormy coasts of the Atlantic and the serene shores of 
the Pacific ; " on every towering hill and in every teem- 
ing valley, our voice of gladness rings. 

The great grief brought to us by the assassination of 
our President modulates the expression of our joy, but 
the lessons of his life are graven by the horror of his 
death deep in all hearts. And while the loss of such a 
man to such a nation in such a period of its history was 
mysterious and unintelligible, it yet served, as no other 
event might have done, to unite all hearts at home, and 
to draw from the whole civilized world a sob of sym- 
pathy. 

God " hath not dealt so with any nation : and as 



84 Pulpit and Platform. 

for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye 
the Lord." 

From this, our vantage ground of realization, we look 
out upon the coming future, when the mighty tide of 
population rolling eastward and westward shall, commin- 
gling, occupy the breadth of the continent ; when, mindful 
of past blessings, they shall strive for peace and union ; 
when, instead of the clangor of war and the gleaming of 
arms, there shall rise to heaven the busy hum of indus- 
try and the waving richness of plenty ; when the green 
earth shall no more be reddened by the blood of the 
innocent and the helpless ; the wild whirlpool of anarchy 
and rebellion no more fling toward heaven its bloody 
and its hellish spray, but the broad Alleghenies shall 
answer back to the snowy Cordilleras in accents of 
peace and gladness till from where Niagara sends up her 
foam with thunderous sound to where the Father of 
Waters rolls his mighty tide beneath a tropical sun, 
from every hill, from every prairie, and from every 
mountain side shall rise the grateful hymn of praise 
and the longing hopes of faithful hearts be realized by a 
united people, virtuous, intelligent, and free ; the shift- 
ing scenes of a forming civilization shall give place to a 
consolidated nationality; the hardy and industrious, the 
ardent and impetuous, the energetic and daring men in 
all sections shall be linked in production and manu- 
facture, by commerce, and by cheap and swift communi- 
cation and joined by the feeling of reciprocal fraternity, 
equal rights and equal burdens will be equally distributed 
under one flag, on which the stripes shall symbolize the 
tears and blood which purchased union, and the stars 
the hopes which crown our destiny. 

The nation is greater than the State, and above the 



Thanksgiving. £5 

banner which means freedom to the nation there can be 
but one ensign — the cross, which means liberty for the 
race. And as the winds of heaven expand the folds of 
the flag and wrap them around that only loftier symbol, 
the eyes of the world shall see the future of our hopes 
in the cross draped with the stripes but radiant with the 
stars. 



CHRISTMAS. 

I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the 
churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and 
morning star. — Rev. xxii, 16. 

The Christian Church throughout the world has set 
apart a day to celebrate the birth of Christ, its founder. 
It matters little whether it be the actual anniversary of 
the great event which gave a Saviour to a fallen race, 
nor need we question the wisdom of appointing any day 
in time to call up specially the gift of God which length- 
ens out time into eternity. We know there was a night 
when shepherds watched, and a morning when the angels 
sang, and we shall look to-day at the great fact then and 
thus brought to light. 

The affirmation in the text is by the risen and as- 
cended Jesus. " I am the root and the offspring of Da- 
vid." It is a wonderful statement of a most wonderful 
fact. It comes to us with the accumulated evidence of 
prophetic promise and historic fulfillment. 

While there is much in revelation that must ever be 
mysterious and probably incomprehensible, there is also 
much that is of distinct force and clear interpretation. 
The declaration with reference to the incarnation stands 
in no doubtful connection, is shrouded by no ambiguity; 
it is the simple statement of his history by the Saviour 
of men. But the thought which it suggests is full of 
mystery. It is that great thought with which the apos- 
tle's mind was burning when he said, " Great is the 



Christmas. 87 

mystery of godliness : God was manifest in the flesh, 
justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the 
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
glory." Here is a fact which, however clear in the sense 
of distinctness of statement, is mysterious in the charac- 
ter of the truth stated. We can never comprehend how 
the " root " could have become the " offspring " of 
David ; yet we must admit the fact. It is not by any 
means an isolated statement, but accords with the whole 
tenor of Scripture. These words of the exalted Christ 
are like the words he used when here among men. He 
claimed a continuous existence, outreaching the birth 
and being of the great patriarch, and applying the name 
of God to himself said, " Before Abraham was I am." 
" He was made flesh and dwelt among us." The affirma- 
tion of his deity, made from the sphere of his exaltation, 
accords with all the prophetic announcements as he in- 
terpreted them, and reaffirms the words which he spoke 
concerning himself. To those who accept him he is 
either all or nothing ; he is either all he claimed to be 
or else he is unworthy of our confidence and trust. There 
is and can be no middle ground ; and those who en- 
deavor to hold him to be a good man while denying the 
claim which this good man made to divinity, are practic- 
ing a strange incongruity. 

An important part of the text is the assertion that the 
" root " of David is ''offspring" of David; the one 
term implying a springing or germinant force, the other 
a subsequent and resultant outgrowth, terms which are 
the exact equivalents of the language of St. John when 
he says, " The Word was made flesh." We are not called 
upon to explain how these two facts can coexist. All 
life is so profound a mystery that it cannot be compre- 



88 Pulpit and Platform. 

hended or understood ; and it is no greater wonder that 
deity and humanity could exist in one personality than 
that any life can be. These important facts form the 
mystery of the incarnation, the greatest of all mysteries, 
as it is the most important of all facts. If the " Word" 
was not " made flesh," then virtually as Saviour he 
would not fulfill the promises nor the prophecies of his 
coming in the Old Testament nor the angelic announce- 
ment in the New. It is important for us to be well 
grounded in the proofs of his humanity — a thought 
vastly more incomprehensible than his divinity; it in- 
volves more mystery and is fuller of intensest meaning. 
It is the thing difficult to be understood. His divinity 
was no miracle. It was a fact attested by all the " glory 
he had with the Father before the world was," and certi- 
fied again by his ascension to that glory. His divinity 
was no miracle, that was his inherent essence; but his 
humanity was a miracle. That God should so intimately 
associate himself with the beings he had made, and who 
had rebelled against him, as to become actual partaker 
of their nature and be in all things made like unto the race 
— be born a child, outcast, despised, this was such an exer- 
cise of divine power, so great an interference of divine 
love in human life, as to be not merely a miracle but the 
one miracle ; the wonder of all angels as it is the hope of 
all men. It was as complete in its execution as it was 
wonderful in its object and conception. His humanity 
was no mere hallucination. The " root of David" be- 
came the " offspring of David." "The Word was made 
flesh," not seemed to be so; assumed a new condition ; 
one not pertaining to his nature, and dwelt, " tented," 
among us ; that is, assumed a transient abode, one not 
permanent nor enduring. And these facts set forth in 



Christmas. 89 

the preface to John's gospel are confirmed by every in- 
cident of his most marvelous life and history. He lived 
by inspiration of the same air that gives vitality to our 
organization ; he ate the same food that his companions 
ate, and he died physically as all men die. He mani- 
fested all the natural conditions which we display. He grew 
from infancy to manhood, manifesting the peculiarities 
of the successive stages of human growth ; he hungered 
when deprived of food, and in his thirst asked the won- 
dering woman of Samaria for drink as he " sat tired by 
the patriarch's well ; " when wayworn and weary he 
found repose in sleep, and the exhaustion of his frame 
was such that the storm which terrified his disciples and 
threatened the destruction of the vessel did not rouse 
him ; he wept over Jerusalem, and tears were the natural 
outgushing of his sorrow when standing in the midst of 
the bereaved and broken-hearted. He was completely 
identified with us. His intelligence gradually developed. 
As a child he sat among the doctors, hearing them and 
asking them questions, but " increased in favor and in 
wisdom." He manifested human feelings — joy, sorrow, 
indignation, caution, humility ; "he took not on him the 
nature of angels," but " was made flesh ; " he passed the 
trying ordeal of temptation under such circumstances as 
to convince us that he was assailed with the intent of un- 
fitting him humanly for the abode of divine purity; he 
was " made flesh " in all respects like those he came to 
save, different, far different, from what was anticipated 
and desired, very unlike the ideal which the allusions of 
prophecy, misinterpreted, had led Israel to expect; but 
how far surpassing in glory all the uttered and unuttered 
yearnings of humanity. That humanity had been wrecked, 
the wild play of its passions, the fierce outgoing of its 



90 Pulpit and Platform. 

will, the intense selfishness of its desires, all these had 
wrought out ruin. The earth had been cursed on this 
account and by these means ; and the promise of deliver- 
ance from this general curse had been localized by the 
people to whose care and keeping the promise had been 
given, until they thought only of national renown and 
political grandeur. They lost sight of the great fact that 
the Saviour of man became man of necessity for salva- 
tion, and of the seed of Abraham merely as circumstan- 
tial and accessory. 

The assumption of humanity was God's plan of re- 
demption, the becoming " offspring of David " merely 
the means of recognizing the great Person who should 
free all the race and establish his claim to be the prom- 
ised One. While, therefore, the expectant people of 
Israel were looking for a king of the nation and ruler 
of the people, and Herod was trembling with anxiety for 
the safety and permanence of his throne, God had pre- 
pared a Saviour for the world at whose coming hell 
should shake and Satan tremble. 

All human hope centers in the " Word made flesh." 
We may not understand why God so ordered it, but hav- 
ing so decided we may know why he told us of it. It 
was doubtless to develop in our minds, by the knowl- 
edge of his divinity, a confidence in the efficiency of the 
work he performed, and by the knowledge of his hu- 
manity to make us feel that we may be partakers in all 
the benefits of it. We are told that he was the " Word," 
the " root of David," that we may trust in him. We are 
told that he was " offspring of David," " Word made 
flesh," that we may have hope for ourselves. We needed 
both. The work was too grand for mere humanity. 
The best and noblest had tried and could not save them- 



Christmas. 91 

selves. Only in God was power enough to encircle the 
whole human family and reach all human woe. We, 
who cannot even estimate that woe, never could have 
removed it. The race had once well-nigh perished in 
the waters of the flood, and the ark of its hope had 
rested by divine command on Ararat; but all the waters 
of that flood had never cleansed its guilt nor purified its 
leprosy. Human agency was in vain ; no arm but God's 
could reach us. No power but that which made us first 
and loved us always could arrest our doom. And so 
" the Word," " by whom all things were made," "was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us," that our salvation 
might be as possible as its necessity was imperative. 

The " offspring of David," by the order of God, became 
a " man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; " rejected 
and poor, he was at last deserted by his friends and 
murdered by his enemies ; and all the sympathy the 
heart can feel is enlisted in behalf of him who " endured 
such contradiction of sinners against himself." He 
bore our sorrows and carried our griefs, was wounded 
for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. He 
was as solitary in the isolation of his purity as he was 
alone in the endurance of his suffering. He trod the 
wine press alone, and of the people, there was none with 
him. The people whose nation he honored in his birth, 
nay, the race he came to save and whose form of flesh 
he wore, deserted him ; and he wept his tears of suffer- 
ing and dropped his sweat of blood, toiled under his 
cross, and died upon it as the man Christ Jesus. There 
is a terrible impulse of sympathy arising from the fact 
of a common manhood ; and we learn to know that one 
who so sorrowed, so .suffered, so wept and moaned must 
know how to feel for those who suffer and sympathize 



92 Pulpit and Platform. 

with those who mourn. The mortality in which we 
groan, being burdened, and which subjects us to anguish 
and to dying, needs stronger help than human resolu- 
tion, and higher power than mortal consolation ; and so, 
when trembling on the verge of dissolution, when cower- 
ing beneath the oppression which has lashed and crushed 
the earth for ages, the soul can trust in such a power as 
changes " the valley of shadow " into the " mount of vis- 
ion," and enables us, through the parting curtains of an 
awful mystery, to "see the King in his beauty," and to 
" behold the land that is very far off." 

Such power is not found in ordinary expedients, nor is 
it the result of any worldly sympathy or teaching. The 
race had not found it, though we had questioned the 
stars ; we had not known it, though we had inquired of 
the grave concerning it. No sufficiency of companion- 
ship had been realized in all the results of human fore- 
sight, and no adequate relief had come even in answer 
to our prayers, till at length One came, with the rare at- 
tendants of poverty and humility, and, enduring life's 
trials, spoke words of cheer to the desolate. As the 
great representative of humanity he entered most inti- 
mately into all life's sorrows, and, claiming to be God, 
proved himself no less to be man. He taught us the 
blessing of divine companionship by his own most in- 
timate acquaintance with our misery. So perfect was 
his coordination with our humanity that sufferers ever 
since have felt that "in all their affliction he was afflicted;" 
and so it ever will be. The multitude of the ages will 
not lessen the abundance of his love, nor the num- 
ber of those who love him produce in him divided love 
for us. He, the one " made flesh," " offspring of David," 
is able to save and to succor all who sin, and conse- 



Christmas. 93 

quently sorrow, so complete was he in all his relations 
to humanity and God. 

The world needed such a being. It had groaned long 
and labored fruitlessly to realize its own ideal without 
achieving it, when God sent perfectness into humanity 
and superadded divinity. He came and dispersed dark- 
ness ; he came and dispensed light. There were sorrow 
and tears when he suffered in Gethsemane and died on 
Calvary, and the trusting heart grew less and less con- 
fident as the darkening sky grew somber and then sad, and 
the rocking earth shuddered as though in pain ; and 
hope at last went out and was concealed in the tomb of 
Joseph with the body of our Lord. Roman sentinels 
paced slowly by the rock which closed the entrance, and 
the seal intended to secure it from all possible violation. 
Days and nights passed, when lo ! one morn the sullen 
gray that streaks the east was pierced, and through the 
early hours the luster of a star was seen, not slowly rising, 
as does the harbinger of day, but bursting, as it were, in 
sudden splendor upon a silent world. The soldier may 
have paused in his pacing and looked up, if so, above 
the sepulcher, and shedding down upon him rays of light 
and love was a glad star, not such as guided the wise 
men who from the East came bearing gifts to Judea's 
new-born king, but the " bright and morning star," per- 
petual benediction and perpetual blessing to all the sor- 
rowing and the sad. 

By the death of Christ the world's hope was shrouded 
in gloom, but by his resurrection and ascension the scene 
of triumph was transferred to the heavens. Balaam, the 
son of Beor, had said, " I shall see him, but not now: I 
shall behold him, but not nigh : there shall come a Star 
out of Jacob." And Jesus is this bright and morning 



94 Pulpit and Platform. 

star. Rising from the grave he disperses its gloom from 
hades, he dispels its terrors from a sinful world, he 
leaves it blessed with the fact of his incarnation and 
glorified by all the splendor of his ascension and triumph. 
He shows us the full perfectness of earthly possibility 
and drapes our frailty with the garments of immortal love- 
liness. In declaring by his life what earth may be he 
has but shown us what heaven is, and given assurance 
of our admission to its joys by demonstration of the 
slight barrier that even death can interpose. 

This is the truth which gives stability and confidence 
to all our expectations. We needed higher consolation, 
and God sent his Son ; we needed a loftier example, and 
Christ came to guide us ; we needed a purer sacrifice 
and a holier priest, and he was " made flesh " and offered 
himself once for us all. And we have seen his star. Three 
wise men only saw the journeying star that guided their 
steps to Bethlehem. But we may all see the great light 
which from the morning star beams on the world, fixed 
in the spiritual heavens, effulgent as God. 

What strong contrasts the Bible gives us ! What pic- 
tures it presents to our adoring vision ! On Bethlehem's 
plains the watching shepherds, in Joseph's garden the 
watching sentinel ; silence broods over both. Shepherds 
were sinking into slumber; they may have exhausted all 
expedients for wakefulness, the pipe had ceased its note 
of cheer, and mirth and jest had failed, while as they 
wrap closer about them their garments of protection, all 
unexpectedly, " suddenly," the angel of the Lord came 
among them. Possibly they were devout, possibly they 
had closed their vigil with the voice of prayer, but they 
were startled and amazed when the angel came. So, 
too, the Roman soldier may have been wearied with his 



Christmas. 95 

watch, but to sleep for him was death, and he may have 
stamped his feet and shaken his trusty spear shaft as 
wearily the hours pass on, when suddenly to him also 
there appears a vision. The stone he guards rolls in 
mystery from the portal it is set to close, and in affright 
he runs to call the captain of the guard ; in speechless 
haste, breathless, in a very panic of terror, hearing no 
voice of angels, no song from heaven, not daring to look 
up where the star beams, while the shepherds hear the 
hymning choir, and "the multitude of the heavenly 
host ! " What contrasts ! Silent earth and shouting 
heaven ; soldiers and shepherds astonished and abashed, 
angels jubilant, Bethlehem's star and morning star, the 
one beaming at midnight, the other flashing at dawn ; 
the one announcing, the other confirming the truth. 
This day we celebrate the one because we believe the 
other ; and therefore we ought not only to celebrate this 
one day as if it were the day of his birth, but our lives 
should be a prolonged celebration of his coming. Every 
day should be hallowed with the thought of Christ, and 
every act we do in all our lives should be the expression 
of our praise. If we are true Christians each day of 
every year will find us at the early dawn with thoughts 
of Bethlehem, each noon with thoughts of Calvary, and 
each night with longings for the coming of the morning 
star. He is the light which guides us ; he is the power 
which saves us. The rays he throws into the dark valley 
illume it as a torch ; the eye rests on it till the films of 
death gather and the spiritual vision possesses itself of 
light. Its radiance beams like a beacon on each Chris- 
tian's grave; not in coldness, like moonbeams on the 
marbles of our cemeteries, but with rays of warmth and 
beauty, suggesting the glory of the better land, showing 



g6 Pulpit and Platform. 

us immortality arrayed in white walking among our 
tombs. 

This, after all, is our great stay and support. The fact 
that divinity can assume humanity shows that humanity 
can receive divinity, and thus the incarnation is the as- 
surance of the possibility of our salvation. This turns 
all the thoughts and aspirations of the race to the great 
central point of its history, " the Word made flesh." 
Thus, while the mountain with the ark is the Ararat of 
history, the hill with the cross becomes the Ararat of re- 
demption. Surging waves pass, dismal storms cease, 
dark clouds part, stars of hope beam lovingly upon our 
way, cheering us with the joy which presages immor- 
tality. He is our " morning star," not the prophecy of 
the dawn, but the assurance that the dawn has come, 
and that purity and gladness have become our portion. 

We go out into the silent night and gaze up into its 
mysteries ; we count the orbs, those couriers of the sun, 
and we may watch them as they shine till the sun rolls 
back again to power. Their light is valuable ; it cheers 
the prisoner in his cell and guides the night traveler on 
his way ; but how feeble its flame, how small a portion 
of darkness does it penetrate and relieve ! How different 
from the "day-star" far up in the dome yonder! Its 
radiance is steady and wide. It gleams through the 
thickest clouds; it lies beyond the reach of storms; it 
throws its illuminations over continents and worlds. So 
in the clear calm depths of the Christian heart there is a 
star shining even when the sun is brightest, and un- 
clouded when its rays are fullest, beaming ever like the 
Shekinah and glowing with the manifested love of God. 
The story of the incarnation is as a star, it gives its light, 
it illumes ; but the day-star in the soul, the morning star 



Christmas. 97 

in conscious experience, this is the divine presence, 
" Christ in us, the hope of glory.'' This is the day-star 
" risen in our hearts " until the day dawn ; it pierces 
through all the clouds of our depravity; the storms of 
passion cannot quench it ; it reveals to us upward realms 
of being and sheds its rays upon our earthly path. We 
must not undervalue the external light of revelation ; it 
is a lamp shining in a dark place, but it is not to be com- 
pared with the internal light of Christian experience. We 
are permitted to have truth not merely as a lamp in our 
hands, but as a central star in the firmament of our souls, 
to shine " until the day dawn." Revelation kindles this 
star within us, it is the harbinger of the day. As sure as 
it shines the sun is on the march, and it shall rise. Its 
beams shall soon skirt the horizon and play upon the 
summits of the lofty hills. It shall not pause until it 
reaches the meridian and pours its rays over the whole 
hemisphere of soul, thawing every fountain of the heart 
into love, quickening every latent germ into life, and 
making the whole fruitful as " the garden of the Lord." 
Christmas Day to us should be the birthday of the 
morning star in all our souls. It should recall not only 
the manger in Bethlehem, but the dawn of the worlds' 
hope in our experience. It should be not merely a day 
of festivity and mirth, but a day of spiritual joy and 
gratulation. Holy thoughts become us, as also happy 
thoughts. Mary's mother-love for her babe should 
teach us tenderness to childhood ; the adoration of the 
wise men should teach us to offer worthy gifts ; the song 
of the angels should awaken in us thoughts of " peace on 
earth, good will to men." The morning star should 
lead us to adore with purest reverence the " root and 
the offspring of David." 
% 



98 Pulpit and Platform. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 

Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again. — John iii, 7. 

We are told that we must not " marvel " at this, 
wonderful as it appears, strange as it sounds. It must, 
therefore, be in harmony with God's usual method of 
procedure, and the " new creation " must have analogies 
with the old. Turning to the account given of the old we 
find each successive thing made and completed " after 
its kind," not from nor out of each other. There is a de- 
velopment, a law of progressive procedure, but it is not 
the development of one kind out of another, but the 
development of each kind to its own limit of perfect- 
ness, which is reached by its being itself, not by its be- 
coming something else. The same elements may and 
do enter into minerals and vegetables and animals. 
They differ greatly in the quantities in which they 
mingle and combine, but they differ more in something 
else. As scientists we are foiled in our attempts to 
solve the origin of species ; we have not been able as yet 
to show how a stone can ever become a vegetable or a 
vegetable an animal, though we may have found a speci- 
men of each, which, on analysis, yields exactly the same 
elements. Each has its own peculiar function, which 
is fulfilled by its being itself, not by its becoming some- 
thing else. The mineral disintegrates, and its elements 
enter into vegetable structures and compositions, but 
the stone, even of the highest order, is lower than the 
lowest herb; and vegetables mold, and their elements 



The New Birth. 99 

are incorporate with animal forms, but the lowest form 
of animal life outranks the noblest of the herbs. The liv- 
ing thing, in which there is scarcely a trace of life and 
of which men are disputing whether it have life at all, is 
a different thing from the cedar, and a nobler thing than 
the palm, if it be true that the pulsation which seems to 
move within it be a throb of life. And of animals the 
same is true. Looking at them as they group them- 
selves in orders and in classes we cannot fail to trace a 
graduated fundamental increment, which we call growth, 
from the first rude being up to man, the noblest of them 
all. But nowhere in all history, never in all observa- 
tion, has the higher come from the lower by the mere 
development of what was in it ; always and invariably 
the higher has been achieved by the addition to, or the 
obliteration of, something in the lower. 

There is something by which the orders may be dis- 
tinguished from each other, though there are seeming 
correspondences or relations between them, but more 
than development is needed to make the one from the 
other. The step which is the dividing line between all 
orders, and which marks the limit which they cannot 
pass, is just as absolute as though there was no seeming 
correspondence or relation of the one above to the one 
below; the one is limited in its development to its own 
class, and there would seem to be a universal law which 
forbids that they should ever, under any circumstances, 
become anything else. The grades of life and of forma- 
tion, or creation, which science asserts to have been the 
probable order of succession in history, may have been 
the order and the plan of the world's construction ; but 
it is just as really a creation if each order was appointed 
to develop its own full measure of capability ; and after 



ioo Pulpit and Platform. 

this was reached the word was spoken by which a higher 
came into being — just as much a creation as though one 
word had made the rocks, filled as they are with fossils, 
and all the varied forms of vegetable and animal life. 
Instantaneousness is not essential to the idea of creation ; 
all is creation that results in new, that is, not previously 
existent life. It is all creation, whether it be the slow 
outcoming of a thousand ages from the womb of the 
morning, or the sudden bursting of created beauty in the 
twinkling of an eye, or the flashing of a star. God, who 
created, has determined the boundaries of each class, 
and marked out the scope of its range and power as 
surely as he has given line and limit to the surging sea. 
There is between each an act creating the higher, a 
something which the lower never could achieve, a some- 
what that God makes ; an act formative, creative, be- 
tween mineral and vegetable, between vegetable and 
animal, and between each group, each series included in 
these great departments. 

If, now, the law for souls is as the law for minerals 
and plants and living things ; if, as they develop, each 
after its kind, no evolution passes the limit of kind, no 
mineral becomes vegetable, no vegetable animal, and, so 
far as observation and inquiry have gone, no animal de- 
velops into another species, what shall be the develop- 
ment of a natural soul, with all its disabilities? Can it 
burst its environment and become somewhat else than 
the thing it is, insensate and inanimate? The law of 
limitations forbids that this natural shall become spirit- 
ual by ordinary processes of evolution, just as it pre- 
vents transmutation of stones into cedars of Lebanon, 
or mosses into angels of God. 

There is a natural and there is a spiritual manhood. 



The New Birth. ioi 

The natural man is monarch of this world ; the spiritual 
man is heir of the world to come. Culture and the 
civilizing processes of education develop what is in the 
natural man and qualify him for his temporal dominion, 
but will not confer heirship in God's kingdom ; for this 
a divine procedure is needed, resulting in a divine simili- 
tude or likeness. Without this man cannot " see the 
kingdom of God," since the like alone perceive like- 
ness. We are born in likeness of our earthly parentage; 
for this natural birth we are prepared by embryonic 
processes. Our approach to " likeness to God" is made 
through a new birth, for which we are prepared by the 
exercise and development of what is in us, but in which 
we are created anew. And as we cannot pass the divid- 
ing line in other departments of creation, so we cannot 
in the spiritual kingdom. And as for methods of 
growth we find that agricultural processes will not 
apply to minerals, nor stock-raising processes to agricul- 
ture, so we cannot hope to fit men for heaven by mere 
human methods of culture and education. 

Human theories cannot explain divine processes. 
There must be different beginnings, endowments of 
power, tendencies of attraction, innate propulsions, to 
account for the varieties of life, motion, being. Science 
has never discovered these ; it stands to-day silent in the 
presence of the long ages which preceded the organiza- 
tion of germs. Admit the protoplasm, admit the germ, 
and science tells of methods of growth and processes of 
development ; but as to the how or why of the existence 
of these it has no answer to our questionings; astron- 
omy is silent as the distant star depths; geology sits 
mute amid her excavations. 

Revealed religion alone has a competent theory for 



102 Pulpit and Platform. 

solving these enigmas. That theory is a succession of 
creative acts. The dramatic form in which these are 
expressed in the Genesis displays God "in beginning, 
creating," forming light, firmament, earth, grasses, orbs, 
living creatures, not from, nor out of, each other, but by 
successive operations ; creating materials and organizing 
them according to his will, uniting the elements in min- 
eral forms, reuniting them again in vegetable growths, 
reuniting them again in animal life, and at each reform- 
ing giving the word and thus creating the new. 

The analogy of revealed religion to the Biblical account 
of the constitution and course of nature will, therefore, 
require a creative act to constitute a spiritual man. "All 
that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust 
of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, 
but is of the world ; " that is, all that is in the world is 
of the world ; sensuality, covetousness, ambition, self- 
seeking in all its types enter into the great tests of the 
sinless, both of those who fell and of Him who alone 
triumphed. 

Eve "saw that the tree was good for food" — flesh ; 
"pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make 
one wise " — pride of life; Christ was tempted " to make 
bread " — flesh ; to accept kingdoms without suffering to 
conquer them, to display divine support by casting him- 
self from a pinnacle of the temple. Self is manifest in 
all, self the root of all. 

Self-assertion may be assumed to be the source of an- 
tagonism to God, and therefore there can be no victory 
by self. To oppose one form of self-assertion by another 
is merely to change the direction and character of self- 
expression, not to conquer self. There can be no over- 
coming by self-power; then "who is he that overcometh 



The New Birth. 103 

the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son 
of God? " The belief which accomplishes this must be 
more than an intellectual conviction of a truth, because 
it is not to reach an intellectual but a spiritual fact — a 
fact concerning God, who is Spirit, and " spiritual things" 
must be "spiritually discerned." 

The belief here mentioned must therefore be spiritual 
discernment, or perception. It must, moreover, be the 
perception of a person by a person, not a belief in 
crowns and harps and palms, but in Jesus, and in him 
alone ; not in his offices of teacher, example, guide, but in 
his personality as Son of God. Power to do this is not 
self-power, but bestowed, conferred power ; to " as many 
as recieved him, to them gave he power ; " accepting him 
in his personality we perceive him in his relations ; he 
becomes "way" to God by his atonement, "truth" of 
God by his testimony, "life " of God in us by imparted 
divine power. This is not self-power, but God-power in 
us. " I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the 
life which I now live ... I live by the faith of the Son 
of God." Our "life is hid with Christ in God," "where- 
fore if any man is in Christ there is a new creation " 
(Revised Version, margin). The rationale of this process 
and result may be in this, that originally our spiritual 
powers were dominant, man perceived God, delighted in 
him, waited for the coming of the cool of the day to hear 
his voice in the garden ; by the act of sin, in attempting 
knowledge, that is, intellectual conception of good and 
evil, the spiritual powers were subordinated to the intel- 
lectual ; in that nature mankind have since been born, 
with spiritual faculties dormant, for efficiency useless, prac- 
tically dead. In the reception of Christ there is, accord- 
ing to his statement, a life-giving process, the " dead in 



i<H Pulpit and Platform. 

trespasses and sins " are "quickened," spiritual life as- 
serts again supremacy, " old things pass away, all things 
become new," new motives, " the love of Christ" — new 
social standard, knowing " no man after the flesh " — new 
spiritual history, " all things become new." Thus a new 
element is put into the life ; Christ displaces self, we live 
for him, act upon his plans, with his motives, by his 
methods, for his glory. Self is gone, boasting excluded, 
Christ is enthroned. 

" The world cannot withstand 

Its ancient Conqueror ; 
The world must sink beneath the hand 

Which arms us for the war ; 
This is the victory — 

Before our faith they fall ; 
Jesus hath died for you and me ; 

Believe and conquer all." 

Practically such spiritual perception of Jesus as the 
Son of God makes him ours, his life our life, his home 
our heaven. We enter the kingdom of God. 

We no longer discuss whether this or that act will im- 
peril our destiny, but whether it will glorify Christ. No 
longer do we make claims and bargains, or live for the 
purpose or in the mere expectation of reaching heaven 
at the last ; rewards all sink into insignificance when 
compared with the fact of pleasing him ; the man is lifted 
above the thought of compensations, bargains, and re- 
wards, and realizes that " to do wrong is hell, and to 
have Christ is heaven." 

Such spiritual perception not only puts a new element 
into life, Christ instead of self, but entering the kingdom 
of God gives a new idea concerning death. 

To the natural man death is a terror; it removes him 



The New Birth. 105 

from his enjoyments, his plans, his hopes; it ends his 
happiness and gives no suggestion of hereafter. It 
therefore stands before him as a fate which masters his 
natural strength, weakening and making powerless the 
limb of the athlete and the frame of the giant, " com- 
mingling all in undistinguishable dust." It interrupts 
his intellectual pursuits and removes him in the midst 
of literary work, with plans all unaccomplished, poems un- 
written, philosophies unreached, scientific problems un- 
solved. The thought of its coming unnerves him ; the 
fear of its desolation affrights him ; he feels his helpless- 
ness, realizes his utter loneliness, and he is " all his life- 
time subject to this bondage." But union with Christ, 
"the word abiding in us," changes the outlook. He is 
now our life ; where he is there we shall be ; when he 
shall appear, we shall appear with him ; " because he 
lives, we shall live also." The feeling of helplessness is 
gone ; the craving for sympathy is satisfied ; the eternal 
safety of destiny is secured. We are no longer atoms, 
floating now in sunbeams and now quenched in darkness, 
blown by caprice and wafted hither and yon by circum- 
stances, with no fixed destiny, no discerned future; but are 
convoys for heaven, freighted with blessings from heaven, 
riding secure in harbors near heaven — anchored in heaven. 
Dying does not end, but only interrupts our living. 

" There is no Death! What seems so is transition ; 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death." 

We really died when we ceased to sin and were born 
again. Life from that hour is continuous onflow ; death 
does not " divide," that is, separate "the heavenly land 



106 Pulpit and Platform. 

from ours ;" it only changes the sphere and circum- 
stances of living ; it is the bend in the bank of life's river 
which sets the current heavenward. Beyond there is 
infinite growth and room for growing ; time expands into 
eternity, life into immortality. Such a view opens infi- 
nite possibilities : 

"Earth has no mineral strange, 
Th' illimitable air no hidden wings, 
Water no quality in covert springs, 

And fire no power to change, 
Seasons no mystery, and stars no spell, 
Which the unwasting soul may not compel. 

" There will be time to track 
The upper stars into the pathless sky, 
To see th* invisible spirits eye to eye, 

To hurl the lightning back, 
To tread unhurt the sea's dim lighted halls 
And chase day's chariot to the horizon walls." 

In the kingdom of God the thought of infinite growth 
succeeds a spiritual birth. The law of renewed life is 
" they go from strength to strength." 

The weakness of mere physical and intellectual 
strength is fearfully presented to us in the histories of 
"the book." Our first mother was deceived by "the 
lust of the flesh." Eve sinned for an apple ; the first- 
born of the race became a murderer through envy ; he 
who became " father of the faithful " sinned through 
political policy ; the prince having power with God and 
man sinned in designing craft ; Achan, through desire 
for fine clothes ; David, through lust ; Solomon, through 
vanity and conceit ; Judas, for thirty pieces of silver; 
Peter, through personal cowardice and fear; Ananias, 
through desire of reputation for liberality. Human na- 



The New Birth. 107 

ture is weak at best ; our only real strength is " in the 
Lord, and in the power of his might ; " with his armor 
we may " withstand in the evil day, and having done all, 
to stand." 

Spiritual growth is set before us as the maturing of 
strength, and is the grand ideal which fills up the con- 
sciousness of every earnest, laboring soul realizing its 
prophecies and developing its inspirations. Under its 
discipline of self-sacrifice the noblest lives are spent, and 
out of such discipline comes victory. It overcomes the 
world, conquers lust, masters passion, and tramples 
down Satan under our feet. It develops the forces of 
life, the high powers and purposes of the soul, calling 
into exercise all its better feelings, and crowning all its 
energies with noble rewards. There is infinite gain in 
realizing this conception ; it bases itself in a new birth, 
not merely as a mystery of revelation, but as in accord 
with philosophic inquiry and scientific analysis, so that 
it does not marvel at Christ's saying, " Ye must be born 
again." It acquires the powerand conviction of certainty 
by realizing a conscious witness of a divine Spirit ; not 
as a dogma of revelation, but as a realized spiritual fact. 
It does not stumble at the declaration of divine attesta- 
tion, for it knows that as the physical organization is 
reached by sensation, which witnesses only to external 
objects, as mind is approachable by mind through articu- 
late expression, so spirit, unapproachable by sensation, 
unreached by articulate utterance, has its laws of per- 
ception ; distinct from the laws of physics and metaphys- 
ics, as the spirit is distinct from mind and body. And 
as the spirit of man can, without medium, perceive the 
spirit of God, so the Spirit of God may, without media, 
approach the spirit of man and make it to be con- 



io8 Pulpit and Platform. 

scious of its condition, state, and relationships. True, 
human consciousness cannot attest a fact as existent in 
the divine mind, but it can and does attest our own men- 
tal and spiritual states. God can communicate to the 
human consciousness knowledge of our condition, and 
we then become conscious of the communication, not of 
the fact ; in the language of Scripture we have the " wit- 
ness of the Spirit," and are conscious of the witness. 

A new birth, spiritually attested, is the source of divine 
strength in us. No bodily perfectness, no mental culture 
can impart it ; it " brings life and immortality to light; " 
it opens the whole vista of illimitable possibilities ; it 
lifts us above human weaknesses and despondent failures, 
it " overcomes the wicked one," and assures us of a com- 
ing period when all that now perplexes will be solved, 
all that occasions fear be quelled, all wrath of man, dis- 
trust of self, and fear of dying be hushed into oblivion 
or be " heard only as the sound of wild sea waves wast- 
ing their harmless and impotent wrath upon a distant 
shore." Marvelous possibilities, unreached by giant's 
might, untouched by swiftest foot, unrealized by loftiest 
culture, purest poesy, or sweetest song ; unmeasured by 
the proudest philosophy, the most discriminating science ; 
not to be commanded by the eloquence of orators, the 
cunning of statesmanship, the pomp and pride and cir- 
cumstance of war ; undiscoverable by the patient toil of 
many voyagers; unattainable by highest art; not to be de- 
scribed even by the keenest criticism of all embracing 
literatures — yet all within the reach of youth, " those 
who, having been born again, who retain God's word and 
overcome the evil one," have seen and entered the king- 
dom of God. 

How lofty an ideal is thus presented, how far excelling 



The New Birth. 109 

all wreaths of conquest, all plaudits of listening senates, 
and all scepters of dominion. 

" 'Tis God's all-animating voice 

That calls thee from on high ; 
'Tis his own hand presents the prize 

To thine aspiring eye : 

" That prize, with peerless glories bright, 

Which shall new luster boast, 
When victors' wreaths and monarchs' gems 

Shall blend in common dust." 

It is satisfactory to know that the growth of strength 
in the spiritual man does not retard or circumscribe the 
growth and development of other forces in the individual 
and in society. This is made manifest by the fact that 
the religious element has not been wanting in the think- 
ers, leaders, heroes of mankind. Culture has attended 
the onward progress of religious consecration. Revela- 
tion has taught us what we are and what we may be- 
come. Knowledge has increased and become a power. 
Presses, books, and scientific apparatus are multiplied ; 
nations have public schools, and public schools have 
Bibles. The village schoolhouse is near the village 
church, and both are types of Christian civilization. 
The great universities and seats of learning in other 
lands are erected on religious foundations, and in our 
own land, where Church and State are most completely 
severed, the value of educational investments is, in 
schools professedly religious, nearly four times greater 
than in those which are purely secular. The Christian 
astronomer alone finds out new worlds ; the Christian 
philosopher alone compels the earth to yield its treasures, 
disclose its age, interprets the testimony of the rocks, and 
traces truth concerning other spheres in threads of light 



no Pulpit and Platform. 

which are imprisoned at his will. The Christian student 
is called to higher contemplations than the dreams of an 
old philosophy that sought to find out whether there was 
a God, while we "commune with God" and "find him 
everywhere," " grow familiar day by day with his concep- 
tions, act upon his plan, and form to his the relish of 
our souls." 

Christianity, which reveals to us the possibility and 
supplies the power of spiritual strength, is the cause and 
originator of all improvement. Change, culture, prosper- 
ity, devotion, all the elements of advancing civilization 
are her constant attendants, and under her influence the 
world grows better, happier every day. The changes of 
modern civilization are direct advances toward the prin- 
ciples of the gospels. No nation can claim precedence 
among the rest unless her acts and edicts show such a 
spirit as is taught in the law of Christian brotherhood. 

Prosperity attends on this advance. Commerce, pro- 
tected and fostered by Christian enterprise, links men 
together ; her iron bands bring distant points in contact, 
her magnetic pens, thousands of miles long, report the 
history of the passing hour ere yet the shadow marks 
it on the dial. The paths of the sea are marked out in 
highways for trade, old Ocean is beaten white by busy 
fleets, whose pennons of smoke are like dark plumes 
against the sky, while its depths are stirred by electric 
pulses which beat harmonious measures from its shores. 
From every side the enterprise of Christian lands pours 
in upon us all the wealth and wonders of the world, 
while Christian factories with busy loom and wheel sup- 
ply the wants and clothe the nakedness of the entire race. 

It is of course difficult, if not impossible, to determine 
the precise channels by which the inner power of reli- 



The New Birth. hi 

gious living is brought into contact with the world's civil- 
ization. Difficult, because Christian strength is an in- 
ward principle and not an outward form ; because, more- 
over, it is the outgoing in the individual life of impulses, 
silent and holy, which have been breathed on the tender 
hearts of infancy or fallen in dewy freshness on the 
wondering ear of childhood ; it is the outgoing of a 
spiritual perception that comes to the mind and heart of 
youth before the din and strife of the babbling world have 
stunned the inner senses of the soul. It is the operative 
power of an inner life in its onflow toward its fellows 
when it has been made conscious of a divine touch, re- 
ceived a divine attestation, and felt God in the soul. 
This, besides giving power to " become the sons of God," 
also brings its wonderful experiences of infinite things, 
of deep abysmal mystery; these join unutterable voices 
in nameless tellings of high and holy possibilities, and 
thus with apocalyptic splendor and power create the 
martyr spirits who stamp their lineaments on the charac- 
ter and progress of the ages. As they become more and 
more powerful the world grows bright ; abuses, wrongs, 
and tyranny are banished ; peace beats swords into 
plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks. And the 
day is coming when the sword shall no more be stained 
with the blood of the innocent and the helpless, the 
green earth no more be reddened with the carnage of the 
battlefield, the wild whirlpool of anarchy and revolution 
no more fling up toward heaven its bloody and hellish 
spray; when the groan of the oppressed and the moan- 
ing cry of the vanquished shall be heard no more ; but 
when we shall realize the lofty dreamings of Plato, the 
exulting strains of Virgil, the weird numbers of the Sibyl, 
and, higher and truer still, the rapt visions of Isaiah and 



ii2 Pulpit and Platform. 

the mystic imagery of the lone exile of Patmos ; and the 
longing, waiting, sorrowing hopes of a weary and groan- 
ing creation shall be fully embodied in the calm, peace- 
ful, hallowed, and bloodless scenes of the Sabbath of the 
world. 

This will be done by the conquest of self in individuals, 
the consequent defeat of selfishness in mankind, and the 
" overcoming of the evil one " by youth whose strength 
is found in this, that " the word of God abideth in 
them." 



The Things which are Cesar's. 113 



THE THINGS WHICH ARE CESAR'S. 

Render therefore unio Caesar the things which are Caesar's ; and unto 
God the things that are God's. — Matt, xxii, 21. 

Christ here acknowledges the authority of the civil 
government and the duty of submission to properly con- 
stituted authority. He ever proclaimed the fact that his 
kingdom was spiritual, not temporal, and was designed 
to be set up in the hearts of men, and not established 
with outward pomp or show of authority. He here 
teaches that it is not to interrupt the proper and regu- 
lar discharge of the duties which we owe to civil author- 
ity. His kingdom is not to interfere, excepting to 
purify; not to change external form, but by purifying 
the principles which developed that form. 

To rightly comprehend the just relation of religion to 
politics, that is, Christianity to civil government, is a 
duty, but one of the difficult duties of the Christian 
scholar. It is the great problem of Christian civilization, 
and has involved in it all the moral and religious as well 
as the temporal and physical elements of national pros- 
perity. 

Philosophers have framed, or sought to frame, the day- 
dream of a perfect commonwealth wherein the law shall 
be the perfect embodiment of the popular will. Pietists 
have seen visions of a new theocracy, where every law 
shall be the uttered will of God. Christianity designs to 
realize both these conceptions and to furnish a perfect 
commonwealth by the elevation of the national mind 



ri4 Pulpit and Platform. 

through divinely revealed truth. Its mission, so far as 
government is concerned, is to realize the idea of a per- 
fect conformity between the laws of a state and the will 
of God. Its command is, " Render therefore unto Caesar 
the things which are Caesar's ; and unto God the things 
that are God's." Its design is to bring all things of 
Caesar to become things of God. 

In discussing its relation to law and government it is 
important to remember, first, that the laws of a people, 
to be operative and compel obedience, must be congruous 
with the moral sentiments and sympathies of that people. 
There is a distinction between law and equity, a distinc- 
tion between law as ordained and executed in civil soci- 
ety and that justice which is before all human laws, and 
is their only warrant at the tribunal of conscience. All 
law assumes to be the embodiment of justice. At what- 
ever moment its pretensions in that respect cease to be 
recognized it loses all its sanctity. The justice of the law 
must commend itself to the sense of justice in the peo- 
ple, or the law becomes oppressive and intolerable, and 
its enforcement produces revolution. Thus the enforced 
law is a product of the national life, and therefore, so far 
as we know the operative laws of any people, we know the 
character of that people, their civilization, and the meas- 
ure of the development of their sense of justice, since 
this is never far in advance of the laws in which that 
sense of justice is embodied and expressed. Law has 
undoubtedly the effect to modify and cultivate the popu- 
lar sense of justice; but in the order of nature the sense 
of justice makes the law, and not the law the sense of 
justice. A law which represents not right but only the 
will of a dominant power, a law which contradicts the 
sense of justice cannot bend that justice into conformity 



The Things which are Cesar's. 115 

with itself. Magistrates by terror and by threats may 
attempt to sustain such statutes, and judges may pro- 
nounce them valid, but every application of such a law 
stimulates and stiffens antagonism ; every attempt at 
enforcement finds a remonstrance in the sense of justice 
which it violates. This principle found illustration in the 
attempted enforcement in colonial times, of taxation with- 
out representation, and in more recent days the attempt 
to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law ; the sense of justice in 
the popular mind resisted these violations and rebelled 
against them. Only when law expresses what the popu- 
lar thought recognizes as right and just does it quicken 
the judgment and elevate the moral sensibilities of a 
people. The power of law to educate the moral sense 
must depend on the recognition of its justice by the 
moral sense of the people whom it governs. The prog- 
ress of law is, therefore, determined by forces which 
stand behind and guide the wisdom of legislators, the in- 
tegrity of magistrates, and the acuteness of judges. And 
among such forces none are more potent than religious 
ideas. 

It must also be remembered, secondly, that the sense of 
justice, developed or latent, in every human soul, and all 
the sense of duty, allies itself with the instinct which rec- 
ognizes the invisible and the infinite ; it demands, in all 
its thoughts and in all its emotions, some object of reli- 
gious awe, an unseen and eternal yet not an impersonal 
justice. This relation of duty, and especially of the sense 
of justice, to the religious instincts is a fact which must 
be admitted ; for the administration of justice every- 
where invests itself with a religious dignity, invoking the 
name of God, bidding every witness testify in his fear 
and in view of personal responsibility to him. Every- 



u6 Pulpit and Platform. 

where the investiture of rulers is accompanied at least 
with religious ceremonies ; emperors and kings have 
their oil of consecration, our presidents and governors 
their oath of office. 

All history illustrates the power of religion in control- 
ling the destiny of nations and of races. In all the lan- 
guages the song of battle and the song of harvest, the 
wedding gladness and the funeral wail, the ballads of the 
good old time, all tell of the religion which mingled with 
their patriotic inspirations and quickened or saddened 
their modulated utterance. All the arts, if not born of 
religion, have labored and flourished in its service. 
Music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, from the ear- 
liest ages until now, have found their highest employ- 
ment and have wrought their highest achievements in 
ministering to the religious wants and aiding the religious 
sensibilities of our nature. No element of a people's 
life, no one of all the forces which develop and determine 
in the common mind what is right, is more potent than 
are the ideas and traditions, the imaginations and con- 
victions, the sympathies, the aspirations, and the prac- 
tices which made up the distinctive religion of that peo- 
ple. If, then, any religion is thus influential, how shall 
we estimate the force of Christianity ? By what features 
is it distinguished ? In what direction are we to look for 
the manifested results of its contact with society and 
with government ? 

Looking at Christianity as a force in history we may 
say that the power by which it acts begins in its con- 
ception of God. Its one exclusive object of worship 
and of religious fear and trust is a Being not only of in- 
finite power, but of infinite moral goodness. The high- 
est and purest conception which the mind can form of 



The Things which are Cesar's. 117 

moral perfection is identified with the object of worship. 
And the worship of a Being whose Godhead is his holi- 
ness tends to purify and elevate the conception of moral 
perfection. 

Inseparable from the Christian revelation of God is the 
revelation of his law. The Decalogue, the first five of 
whose commands specify duties owed by inferiors to su- 
periors, begins with the highest, the relation between God 
and man, and closes with the corresponding earthly rela- 
tion between parent and child. The second five treat 
of mutual relations between equals : there is one for the 
protection of life, "thou shalt not kill; " another for the 
preservation of purity, " thou shalt not commit adul- 
tery ; " another for the protection of personal rights in 
property, " thou shalt not steal;" another for civil secu- 
rity, " thou shalt not bear false witness ;" another, which 
closes the list, is a recognition of the rights and privi- 
leges of others, li thou shalt not covet/' These are the 
ten stones of the arch which cover domestic happiness, 
soul purity, security in life and property, the things 
which make up national prosperity. They are summed 
up by Christ in two great commandments, and expounded 
by him in that marvelous compendium of all duty, the 
Sermon on the Mount. All this is not mere precept and 
formula, but a quickening appeal to our instinctive sense 
of what is right and good. 

Thus Christianity brings the sense of duty and the 
sense of God into their just relations to each other. All 
false religions, in whatsoever form of enthusiasm or fa- 
naticism or superstition, betray their inferiority and 
humanness by their disorganizing and destructive effects 
upon the moral sense. The corruptions of Christianity 
may all be detected by the same test. But Christianity 



n8 Pulpit and Platform. 

itself, so long as its vital essence is not destroyed, makes 
the sense of duty and the sense of God, the moral ele- 
ment in human nature and the spiritual or religious ele- 
ment, each the complement of the other. It does not 
make morality a substitute for religion, nor does it allow 
religion to become a substitute for morality. By its reve- 
lation of God's law it hallows and exalts all duty, it 
turns all work into worship, all patience into loving sub- 
mission, all enjoyment into praise. The grand impression 
which it produces is that well doing is well being ; that 
goodness is more than all that men call greatness ; that 
duty is the highest thing in the universe beneath the 
throne of God, and that the violation of duty is the par- 
amount evil; that to do right is heaven, and to do wrong 
is hell. In such a manner Christianity, as it slowly 
mixes with the current of a nation's life, acts upon all 
the elements of its civilization, developing human 
progress. 

While the working influence of Christianity may be 
properly said to begin in its conception of God, another 
of its distinctive influences springs from its doctrine of 
the brotherhood of all mankind. All the old religions were 
national. Each was adapted to its locality and had its 
own privileged class. Each was fitted to one climate 
and could flourish only on one soil. They, therefore, all 
tended to the isolation of races and to the separation of 
nations, but Christianity is the religion for the world at 
large. It makes no invidious distinctions of races ; it 
comes with its revelations, its hopes, its sanctions, and 
its institutions to man as man — wherever under the cir- 
cling heavens he may live he " sees in the things that 
are made the eternal power and Godhead " of their 
Maker. To Jew and Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond 



The Things which are Cesar's. 119 

and free its lesson is, "there is no difference." All dis- 
tinctions of race, nationality, language, vanish at its pres- 
ence, for it proclaims " that God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men." Its genius is revealed in the 
parable of the Good Samaritan, its Christ is the Saviour 
of all men, its revelation is like the light, its " line is 
gone out through all the earth," and its " words to the end 
of the world." And this largely aided in its earlier vic- 
tories. The Roman Republic, and then the empire, had 
been crushing and grinding the nations into one mass, 
bringing them, indeed, into contact with each other, but 
also into helpless subjection to a common authority, 
preparing them to catch the awakening consciousness of 
a common humanity. It was this consciousness, involv- 
ing sympathies higher and more divine as well as wider 
than the sympathies of nationality, which claimed a per- 
sonal interest in all that affects the race. " Homo sum, 
et nihil liumani a me alienum puto" was a sentiment 
which might have come from the world's great heart, 
yearning and waiting for the revelation of a faith that 
should unite all nations in the worship of " one God 
and Father of all," and so in the consciousness of one 
humanity. 

We must not forget the dignity and value with which 
Christianity stamps the individual man. That simple 
question, " What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul ? " is a question which 
opens before every individual the separate vista of an infi- 
nite possibility. The thought which that question awak- 
ens, the sensibility to which it appeals, the hopes which it 
inspires, invests humanity, not only in the aggregate, but 
in the individual, with a grandeur and a capability of glory 
that outspans all the reach of the material and the visible. 



i2o Pulpit and Platform. 

In the light of that question and of the thoughts and emo- 
tions it awakens the man is more than the belted earl 
or the sceptered king; the man is more than the hero ; 
the man is more than the laureled sage. Grimed with 
toil, horny with labor, tattered by poverty, " a man's a 
man for a' that." In every individual, from the loftiest 
to the lowliest, the essential humanity, the capability of 
joy and grief, of knowledge, of love and duty, and of 
infinite and immortal destiny, is more than the differen- 
tial of rank or station or of culture. Man depressed, de- 
graded, guilty, and abhorred is yet human. It is the 
awfulness of his humanity which makes his degradation 
awful. 

The law of Christian philanthropy is not a vague ab- 
straction, bewildering the mind and hardening the heart 
with " Thou shalt seek the welfare of humanity as a 
whole," but that better precept, " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." By thus presenting the dignity 
and responsibility. of the individual with his relation to a 
common humanity, and the indissoluble connection of 
all these to God, Christianity shows its relation to law 
and government to be that of an invisible force working 
upon and through the moral sentiments of men. It bids 
us " render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," be- 
cause this is our duty to our neighbor. Whatever we 
can do to strengthen and uphold the laws which protect 
the weak and redress the wrongs of the oppressed we 
must do ; for civil government is the appointed method 
for these ends : they tend to the welfare of man as citi- 
zen. The time, the service, and the money needful for 
the support and maintenance of government are things 
of Caesar ; render them therefore unto Caesar; but remem- 
ber that above Caesar is God, and that he holds each one 



The Things which are Cesar's. 121 

of us responsible for the use in Caesar's service of what 
we have received from him. All things needful for 
Caesar are to be used for Caesar in subordination to God, 
who governs both Caesar and the individual serving him. 
It is the aim of Christianity so to permeate and influence 
all things as that there shall be no antagonism between 
the rightful calls of government and the demands of 
religion. 

The theory of our government, in which the only just 
experiment of freedom in religion and freedom in poli- 
tics has been made, is that the voice of the people prop- 
erly expressed is the voice of God. If it prove not to be 
so we have no immediate remedy. Since, then, in any 
event we are to be governed by it, we must endeavor 
to make it so by educating, intellectually, morally, reli- 
giously, those who utter it. We have chosen to rule 
ourselves, and it is fortunate that we can educate each 
other. 

It is quite safe to say that one of the great dangers to 
modern freedom arises from misconceptions concerning 
the elective franchise. It is too often regarded as a 
mere privilege instead of being felt to be a civil duty. 
It has become the fashion in some quarters to say in 
effect, if not in words, " We leave the settlement of these 
issues to those who choose to manage them," and then to 
claim some sort of loftier social virtues on the ground of 
this indifference, as though the transfer of responsibility, 
were it possible, and unwillingness, were valid excuses 
for the neglect of duty. But even to such persons the 
presence of great crises in affairs, as in the time of the 
late rebellion, is felt to push upon them a measure of re- 
sponsibility which they may not shirk, while in the ab- 
sence of such great and paramount crises we are apt to 



122 PULHT AND PLATFORM. 

look upon the ballot as a privilege, which those who 
choose may exercise, instead of realizing that it is a duty 
from which no man may shrink. Christ's teaching was 
not permissive, but mandatory. " Render unto Caesar" 
was an order, a command, based on the recognition of 
personal responsibility. 

But some will say, " Do you, as a preacher of the Gos- 
pel, advise us to mingle in politics ? " Most certainly I 
do if you are citizens ; if you are not citizens the less you 
have to do with such matters the better. " What ! do 
you advise me," says one, " to attend primary meetings? 
Look at the places where they are often held ; see the 
class of men who flock there and then surround the 
polls. Ought we to mingle with them ? " I answer that 
if men of character and position and social influence 
would but do their duty there would be no occasion for 
such complaints, and the highest duty of American citi- 
zenship would be discharged in appropriate places and in 
the midst of appropriate surroundings. Another set of 
men say, " I can't leave my business," and forget that no 
business would be worth attending to if not protected 
by good laws wisely administered and transacted with 
honest customers. And now tell me what chance there 
would be in any land, and for any city, or for prosperous 
trade, if the land or the city were abandoned to the 
management of those who, because they had nothing 
else to do, had time to run its government, and, to reward 
themselves for so doing, compose rings for the division 
of the spoils of office? It is because of the criminal 
neglect of those men who compose the better class of 
citizens that the baser elements of society have the op- 
portunity to control affairs ; they select places for meet- 
ing congenial to their tastes, and you are not there to 



The Things which are Caesar's. 123 

take your part, and so you and your wishes are not con- 
sidered. Go and insist on having things changed, and 
they will be changed. Go and demand decent men of 
intelligence to be placed in positions of responsibility 
and trust, and such persons will be so placed. Demand 
reputable places for holding primaries, and better places 
will be chosen. Do your duty, and others will not have 
undisputed control. 

Under Christ's teaching the privilege of the ballot in- 
volves the duty of the ballot. Responsibility rests on 
the individual. Every citizen is bound by obligations 
to the welfare of his neighbor and the general good to 
express his sentiments or opinions through the ballot, 
because that is the way designated for this expression. 
Every Christian citizen has in addition an obligation to 
discharge to God. When we vote we choose, we elect, 
we determine certain policies of government or certain 
men for administration, and it is not right that the set- 
tlement of great questions should be left to the ignorant 
and to the prejudiced — to those, in short, who can be in- 
fluenced by the rallying cry of partisans or the length 
of a political procession. These men, to be sure, have 
equally the rights of citizens, but they only have these 
in common with others ; and if only those vote who are 
moved by inflammatory harangues, incited by party cries, 
or influenced by the idea of party spoils, then woe to the 
republic! Because such people never fail to vote you 
should always vote. One of the boasted advantages of our 
political system is that it produces a reciprocity of good 
offices. Prejudice neutralizes prejudice in the alembic 
of the general will, and the residuum of the fusion of 
various opinions, policies, and interests is far better than 
could be reached by any other method. 



124 Pulpit and Platform. 

If men were wise and true, as well as patriotic, ours would 
be the very ideal of a government ; we should have the 
best men in office and the best measures in administra- 
tion. And in exactly the proportion in which this is 
realized are we true to our birthright and our destiny. 
In exact proportion as Christianity becomes by its illu- 
mination a quickening influence upon the minds of men, a 
ruling force in the State, inspires its legislation, controls 
the action of its government, in just that degree and to 
that extent the State becomes a kingdom of God. Just 
as Christianity by its influence on free minds and hearts 
infuses itself into all the forms of thought and life, sub- 
duing and guiding the nation, chasing away the vices 
that have degraded and enslaved mankind, in that pro- 
portion the things of Caesar become the things of God, 
and God's will is done in earth. 

The Christian theocracy, then, is nothing less than the 
willing subjection of men and nations to the will of God. 
It is a religion, and not a hierarchy. Its conquests are 
inseparable from the progress of humanity; they are the 
progress of truth and faith and love in human hearts. It 
brings all human statutes and all human administrations 
of justice into comparison with the absolute justice and the 
infinite benevolence of God as revealed by his quickening 
word. It acts sometimes as the great forces of God in 
nature act, imperceptibly. The changes which it brings 
to pass are gradual, like the changes by which the night 
slowly brightens and finally blushes into day, or like that 
by which, as the earth wheels on in its vast circuit, the 
rigor of winter is slowly softened, the breezes come with 
milder breath, the laughing streams and dimpled lakes 
throw off their fetters, and spring, as in Eden, is adorned 
with the beauty and exhales the odors of a new creation. 



The Things which are Cesar's. 125 

Sometimes we are discouraged as we watch the vicis- 
ig conflict between g< 



situdes of the lono; conflict between good and evil and 



are tempted to distrust. When liberty is betrayed and 
cloven down ; when wrong-doing offends on every side ; 
when great party leaders wink at bribes and forgeries 
and perjury; when good men in blind partisanship defeat 
progress in reform, and for the sake of party triumph 
and the assertion of political strength assist in giving 
power to the pronounced antagonists of righteousness; 
when Pilate, who washes his hands in hypocritical inno- 
cence and purity, strikes hands with Herod, who is 
bold and outspoken in his defiance of purity and right 
— under such circumstances we cry out, ''Where is the 
boasted influence of our religion in the sphere of law and 
government ? Is it all a dream ? " But when we look 
and see how slowly and by what slight advances and in 
spite of what mistakes truth has heretofore made its way, 
we are confident that all hope of triumph is not a dream 
of enthusiasm. No, by the ancient word of promise, by 
the prayers which for thousands of years have been 
wafted to the throne of infinite justice, by the groans of 
the ages, which have travailed in pain together, by the 
cross and its victories, we know that it is no dream. The 
work is His with whom one day is " as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day." The force by which 
the world shall be subdued to Christ, and the things 
of Caesar become the things of God, accumulates as 
time advances. God suffers nothing to be lost ; no mar- 
tyr's fire, no ashes scattered on the wind, no free and 
manly protest against wrong, no example of patient en- 
durance, no appeal to the justice on high, no breath of 
prayer has been or can be in vain. All has been adding 
to the slow accumulation. How slowly, through what 



126 Pulpit and Platform. 

conflicts and sufferings, through what errors, of true and 
earnest men, through what cycles of revolution and of 
seeming retrogression, has Christianity thus far wrought 
out the application of its principles to questions of duty 
and of right in the State! Two hundred years ago the 
doctrine of religious liberty was little more than an enthu- 
siastic speculation ; it had been denied and trampled down 
in the name of Christianity itself; now it is a self-evident 
principle of justice. But how fierce the struggle, how 
disheartening the long and tedious delay ! The victory 
of Christian ideas and sentiments over old wrongs incor- 
porated into laws may be long delayed ; for ages the ad- 
verse influences of law may be in conflict with the better 
influences that are slowly molding the popular mind 
and developing a perception of right and duties. Some- 
times Christianity itself, by some perversion of its teach- 
ings, may seem to sanction laws against which its vital 
spirit is constantly offering an unheeded protest ; but 
sooner or later the victory must come, and law be the 
exponent, not of mere authority, but of acknowledged 
right. Above all unjust law and usage, above all tyranny, 
all usurpation, all iniquity, establishing itself in the 
name of justice and robing itself in the sanctities of law — 
above all this God reigns and reigns forever. Above all 
the forces by which wrong is sustained are the mightier, 
invisible, divine forces by which Christianity will yet 
make its way to universal recognition and dominion. It 
stands in the presence of every human relation an im- 
perative revelation of duty. It is God's law approving 
or condemning every human law. It is encountering 
one after another all public evils. Slavery has fallen ; 
polygamy — twin relic of barbarism — is under condemna- 
tion ; intemperance, with its lust-provoking and crime- 



The Things which are Cesar's. 127 

compelling influences, must follow. Bribery, in all its 
forms of bets on elections, or gifts of place for party 
service in elections, must follow. All these are even 
now doomed ; the handwriting against them is seen 
upon the wall. Christianity is quickening the moral 
sense of nations, pronouncing historic judgment on the 
world's heroes, arraigning sovereigns and democracies 
alike at its august tribunal, overruling and blasting with 
its execrations the decrees of venal legislators and the 
decisions of wicked judges, slowly compelling the recog- 
nition of its precepts as principles of law, both municipal 
and international, elevating the degraded, providing in- 
struction for the ignorant, and placing all men more 
and more upon a level. It is spreading gradually 
among the nations, uttering itself in every language, and 
touching with its celestial illumination every land of 
darkness. It is ushering in the day when " the taberna- 
cle of God shall be with men," when the Csesars shall be 
reverently obedient to Christ, when the bannered eagles 
of all lands shall salute the triumphing cross, and all men 
everywhere " made free by the Son shall be free indeed." 



THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. 

And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered 
nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, Ilearest thou not how many things 
they witness against thee ? And he answered him to never a word ; inso- 
much that the governor marveled greatly. — Matt, xxvii, 12-14. 

"True eloquence does not consist in speech. It 
cannot be brought from far. Words and phrases may- 
be marshaled in every way; they cannot compass it. 
It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occa- 
sion." This definition, by one of our greatest orators, 
implies that appropriateness to the occasion constitutes 
the eloquence of an act, a speech, or a situation. Silence, 
then, if it be most fitting to the circumstances, may be 
more eloquent than words. To measure the effect of a 
situation we must of necessity comprehend the relations 
of the actors as well as their characters and positions. 
The holding up of a limb mangled in the nation's de- 
fense was the mute but most eloquent appeal of an 
accused Roman soldier. The silence of Louis XVI, of 
France, and of Charles I, of England, before their self- 
constituted judges, was in each an act of dignity. I pro- 
pose to consider a more noble scene than any which 
profane history records — the silence of Christ in the 
presence of his accusers. 

There are, however, some preliminary teachings of 
silence which may assist us in our inquiry. 

To the poet's fancy, " Our noisy years seem moments 
in the being of the eternal silence." Repose is suggested 



The Silence of Christ. 129 

by every quiet view of nature. The ineffable stillness 
of wood and plain, the quiet of the shadowy eve and of 
the darkest nights, the hush of caves, the unuttered soli- 
tude of deserts, the loneliness of mountains, and the 
sleep of streams — these all recall to us, or suggest, emo- 
tions akin to those awakened by 

" The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills ; " 

and there is a suggestion of repose in every such view 
or recollection. We think and speak of the earth's 
" rest " when, after the removal of the golden grain, the 
wintry mantle drapes the fields in white, and when the 
laughing, dancing streams are stilled by the frost's work, 
just as naturally as we do of the earth's rest when the 
curtains of the night are gathered in about it. Silence 
suggests repose in earth and air and man. And for this 
reason we are not surprised to find that ancient supersti- 
tion located religious rites in groves and caves. The 
Druids and the Norsemen, the Persians, the Greeks, and 
the idolatrous Israelites selected groves in which to make 
their offerings. Darkness and silence are priests that 
ever speak to the senses, and few of us have ever entered 
alone into dark caves without feeling the influence their 
silence has upon the imagination. The silent Greek 
waited, attentive, for the response of his oracle, scarce 
breathing audibly lest he should disturb the repose of 
his gods. In all lands and in all times silence has been 
the emblem of repose, and the figure of the angel with 
finger closely pressed upon the silent lips has been appro- 
priated to our cemeteries, where the silence of the grave 
suggests the repose of eternity. 

Silence in nature is also associated with sublimity, 
9 



130 Pulpit and Platform. 

which attaches itself to the illimitable, the uncontrolled. 
Sound of any character of necessity is limited, must 
cease. Somewhere in the creation of God it must fade 
away and its pulsations be stilled. But all the unmeas- 
ured beyond is the domain of silence, and there is sub- 
limity in the thought that makes "silence coeval with 
eternity." When tracking back our thoughts, past the 
creating Voice, we reach the ages when the undisturbed 
silence brooded over all. 

" Ere nature's self began to be, 

'Twas one vast silence all, and all slept fast in thee." 

Whenever we reach the unlimited, there we reach the 
realm which silence has overshadowed. The distant 
upper heavens, which lie apart from moving worlds and 
systems, by their very aspect 

" Make our minds as still 
As they themselves appear to be." 

These are the abode of our sublimest thought, and after 
them we reach our loftiest imaginings. So our feeling 
of sublimity is grandest, not when God speaks in thun- 
der, but in the silent pause which heralds the approach- 
ing bolt. The cataract's plunge, though fathomless, is 
not so grand a moment in the life of waters as the rest 
of the billows, when, after whirling in the rapids, they 
pause before launching again into the roar of floods, and 
the startled waves, as though in fright, retreat from the 
edge of the precipice ; this is the instant of the sublimest 
mood. The unvarying monotony of deserts is sublime 
in the stillness with which its sand-waves are tossed — 
now high, now low — but in the direst and most voiceless 
silence. The earthquake's hollow murmuring would be 
too frightful for sublimity if the air was always full of 



The Silence of Christ. 131 

falling walls, and shrieking multitudes did not know the 
stillness of the silent hour in which men await their doom. 
If we turn our thoughts from the voice of silent nature 
to the expressiveness of silence in human conduct and 
action, we are reminded that " the temple of our purest 
thoughts is silence," the mind lifting itself above the 
noisy jar of strifes to the serene composure of a heavenly 
purity. Guilt hastens to repel accusation, but innocence 
hedges itself about with silence, gathers its robes that 
their whiteness be not sullied, and leaves a false accuser 
to his own infamy. Innocence lives down the lie which 
guilt blusters to disprove. He who protests his valor 
has often little bravery in action, as he who boasts of 
purity often conceals thereby his vices. The innocent 
and pure alone can bear to hear the voice of calumny in 
silence and await the hour when the poisoned arrow 
may return to wound the accuser. Guilt may drive us 
into a noisy desperation or crush us into dumb despair ; 
but innocence hears false witnesses in silent sadness. 

"The silence often of pure innocence 
Persuades when speaking fails." 

Therefore there is often rebuke in silence ; it places a 
felt barrier between accuser and accused, occupying a 
high vantage ground and disdaining the leveling admis- 
sion of controversy and dispute. The silence of a mas- 
ter was the rebuke most dreaded by a slave ; for stormy 
passion vents itself, while the unspoken replication is a 
judgment withheld, which may be too fearful to be 
uttered. 

And silence maybe the expression of the saddest grief: 

" The Niobe of nations stood 

Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe." 



132 Pulpit and Platform. 

The intensity of grief may be denied utterance by the 
feebleness of language. The overwhelming tide of a felt 
sorrow never rises to the lips till it has ceased to flood 
the heart, and our earliest sobbings are both proof and 
sign that the waters are subsiding. As there are 
"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," so 
there are griefs which only the aching heart may regis- 
ter and no eye but God's may see. In the full trial of a 
desolating grief the ear becomes attent to other voices 
than our own, and silently we wait the coming of the 
messenger of peace, the harbinger of consolation. We 
watch the night out into the coming morn, and challenge 
not the sentinel stars as they surround the heavenly 
camp. Our hearts are full of misery, and they may break 
or fail, but we cannot force from them one moan or cry; 
grief seals up our utterance, and in the presence of its 
awful mystery of desolation we open not our lips. 

Silence has voices, then, that speak to us of Repose, 
of Sublimity, of Purity, of Rebuke, of Grief; we listen 
to the silence of Jesus and let that speak to us. Look 
at the occasion : " The last word had been uttered 
which our Lord exchanged with the traitor Judas. 
Jesus is delivered up to his enemies, he is bound and 
conducted into the presence of his judges. After a 
hasty examination before Annas, the high priest, he is 
brought before his real judge, Caiaphas. It is midnight. 
The children of nicrht have be^im their dark work in the 
hour which could most truly be called 'their own.' Our 
Lord himself said, 'This is your hour, and the power 
of daikness.' It is midnight; the members of the high 
council have hastily come together, the decree is passed, 
' He is worthy of death.' False witnesses came and said, 
' He said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, 



The Silence of Christ. 133 

and to build it in three days.' And now we read, 'And 
the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou 
nothing? what is it which these witness against thee ? 
But Jesus held his peace.' "* 

We read also in two other passages of Jesus being silent 
in the presence of his unrighteous judges, "And when 
Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad : for he was de- 
sirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard 
many things of him ; and he hoped to have seen some 
miracle done by him. Then he questioned with him in 
many words; but he answered him nothing " (Luke xxiii, 
8, 9). " When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he 
was the more afraid ; and went again into the judgment 
hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou ? But Jesus 
gave him no answer" (John xix, 8, 9). 

In this repeated silence of Jesus in the presence of 
his accusers and of his unrighteous judges there is the 
most eloquent testimony of the repose of his soul. Not 
to answer cutting and unrighteous accusation in any 
other way than by silence requires a deep repose of soul. 
There was no ebullition of anger ; even when he was 
"betrayed with a kiss," that holy soul was never ruffled 
by the storm of human passion. There was not even 
an expression of grief at the bitter cup of which that 
"kiss" was the precursor. He thinks not of himself; 
he thinks only of " the son of perdition ;" he has no eye 
for his own sorrow, but only for the crime of his betrayer; 
in his words to his judges and his silence before the high 
priest we recognize the deep calm of his breast which 
has followed the storm, the undisturbed repose which 
has succeeded the commotion that had stirred the very 
depths of his soul. He had struggled through a Geth- 

* Tholuck. 



134 Pulpit and Platform. 

semane of fearful agony, and sweat of blood had fallen 
to the ground, baptizing it with proof of earnestness; 
but after this had come the angels, comforting and 
strengthening him; and now he calmly surveyed all that 
was yet before him on the earth, and could see through 
death and the grave the achieved glory of his work, 
'•'the travail of his soul," and he "was satisfied." No 
thought of crowning thorns could dim the vision of the 
scepter of dominion he was again to wield over all 
worlds ; no mocking rabble cloud the view of worship- 
ing angels ; no hooting mob shut from his ear the antici- 
pated shout of a redeemed world, the purchase of his 
blood. He could bear stripes — they were for our healing ; 
chastisement — it was for our peace ; death he could suf- 
fer — it was to deliver us from lifelong bondage ; he was 
willing to cry, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ?" that we 
might shout, " O death, where is thy sting? O grave, 
where is thy victory?" This gave repose to his soul; it 
dwelt no more on earth except to drain its dregs of suf- 
fering, that the chalice emptied of bitterness and purified 
by his own blood might be filled for us with lasting 
blessings and with joy unspeakable. 

This silence also testified to the sublimity of his char- 
acter. Any answer which he could have made would 
have admitted that the questioner stood on an equal 
footing with the questioned, the accuser with the ac- 
cused. Being silent was a testimony to the chasm be- 
tween the parties — a chasm so great that the very words 
of the accusation by the one cannot be so much as taken 
up by the other. He stood there between the greatest 
act of treachery and the most dreadful doom, but no 
word escaped him; "he held his peace." So long as 
Jesus speaks he is still knocking ; when Jesus is silent, 



The Silence of Christ. 135 

then it is that he gives up. It is only before those he 
has given up that he is silent ; his silence, therefore, is a 
judgment. And there is a sublimity in the character of 
one betrayed and doomed, by his silence condemning 
and by his silence judging a high priest, a king, and a 
governor. 

What effect on Herod the silence of Jesus had when, 
arraigned before him as one accused, he answered noth- 
ing to his questions, we do not read. But of Pilate 
we read that he exclaimed in amazement, " Answerest 
thou me nothing? " This was the sternest rebuke, this 
the most galling assertion of superiority. One who 
breaks off in such a manner with his judges or accusers 
must, moreover, be possessed of a full consciousness that 
his fate rests in other hands than theirs. Speaking with 
reference to this silence of our Lord, Peter says, "Who, 
when he was reviled, reviled not again ; when he suffered 
threatened not, but committed himself to him that 
judgeth righteously." Thus testimony is given to his 
sense of rectitude and to his purity of character. Even 
Pilate was sensible of this, although he was a man little 
wont to recognize any other measure of justice than 
that which is furnished by the scales which earthly 
power assigns. In surprise he exclaims, " Speakest thou 
not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to 
crucify thee, and have power to release thee?" And 
Jesus points him to the truth, that the scales of justice 
were committed to him by a higher hand : " Thou 
couldest have no power at all against me, except it were 
given thee from above." Thus it is that he places his 
own judges before the highest of all tribunals. 

This calm, this sublime, this God-given silence is 
charged also with its lesson of purity and its testimony 



136 Pulpit and Platform, 

of grief. Untainted innocence, like " a lamb before her 
shearers, is dumb." The holy comforting of the angels 
has not yet been forgotten ; the air of heaven which they 
brought with them on their glad wings purifies even the 
tainted atmosphere of the polluted judgment hall, and 
Jesus, exalted by it, is silent at this mockery of justice. 
His hour had well-nigh come ; his voice was soon to 
grow faint beneath the pangs of cruel torture and the 
exhaustion of protracted suffering, and he wasted no 
words on those whose malignant hate had mocked his 
purity with the semblance of trial, when they had met 
only to pronounce a Predetermined doom. 

There may have been grief in his silence, grief that 
he was there " alone, and of the people there was none 
with him ! " Ah, where were now the multitudes that had 
hung with such deep interest on his words, where the 
hundreds he had fed by miracle, where the crowds that 
pressed upon him with their sick, where the blind who, 
peering into vacancy, had hailed him as he passed ? 
Why were they not there to see him with the blessed 
vision he had given ? Alas ! he was alone ; three faithful 
disciples had fallen asleep while he prayed ; another faith- 
less one had betrayed him with a kiss ; another was de- 
nying him with oaths and cursings. What occasion of 
grief was here! None that he loved to hear him if he 
spoke ; and even those for whom he was now to suffer 
and lay down his life were his accusers ! There was grief 
in his silence, grief unutterable ; it was seen in his eye 
when afterward he turned and looked upon Peter, and 
it broke up the fountain of his heart, for he went out and 
wept bitterly. 

" O Lamb of God, was ever love, 
Was ever grief like thine? " 



The Silence of Christ. 137 

We may judge why Jesus was silent before Herod, for 
Herod was a royal weakling who for the sake of a woman 
had given into the hands of the executioner a man whom 
he himself recognized as a prophet of God ; and he was 
held by Jesus as unworthy of a reply, because on account 
of his irremediable weakness of character any reply 
would have been lost upon him. 

We may judge why Jesus was silent before Pilate, for 
Pilate, though startled and afraid when the Jews said 
Christ made himself the Son of God, had, like a God- 
forsaken worldling, turned his back on Jesus when he 
claimed a spiritual kingdom ; he who did not understand 
him when he confessed himself the king of truth would 
not have understood his claim to divinity. Pilate was 
unanswered because of his utter insensibility. 

The high priest was unanswered because of the hope- 
less hardness of his heart, eaten up, consumed with lust 
of office and desire for place. Conscience may perform 
its office and do its work in the breast of this hypocrit- 
ical accuser. 

Christ was silent before the sensual king, the worldly 
governor, the hardened priest, and is silent now to those 
who, like them in character, are hastening to the same 
dread doom. How fearful is such a silence ! what a por- 
tent of wrath is in it ! Does Christ no longer speak ? Is 
your heart at rest without the knowledge of forgiveness? 
Cease from the sensuality which links your faith with 
Herod. Cease from the worldliness which associates you 
with Pilate. Cease from the hypocritical indifference 
w T hich makes you like the high priest. Cease, that Christ 
may speak to you. O that he would speak to you with 
life-giving power, speak with the voice that wakes the 
dead ! God pity you if Christ is silent now, and if 



138 Pulpit and Platform. 

you have to say with Pilate, " Speakest thou not unto 
me? " 

But if he still speaks to you, " see that ye refuse not 
him that speaketh : for if they escaped not who refused 
him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, 
if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven " 
(Heb. xii, 25). 

Brethren, " let this mind be in you which was also in 
Christ Jesus." Cultivate that heavenly purity which gives 
repose to the soul and sublimity to character, so that you 
may learn to suffer in silence, and in silence to receive 
the consolation of the Comforter. 

" Sweet is the prayer whose holy stream 

In earnest pleading flows ; 
Devotion dwells upon the theme, 

And warm and warmer glows. 

" Faith grasps the blessing she desires ; 

Hope points the upward gaze ; 
And Love, celestial Love, inspires 

The eloquence of praise. 

" But sweeter far the still small voice, 

Unheard by human ear, 
When God has made the heart rejoice, 

And dried the bitter tear. 

" No accents flow, no words ascend ; 

All utterance faileth there ; 
But God himself doth comprehend 

And answer silent prayer." 

There have been moments, doubtless, in our experi- 
ence when the vision of God was clear ; but these are not 
always, nor generally, moments of fullness and of triumph. 
In seasons of desertion and loneliness we are most apt 
to see the ladder of vision and the angels ascending and 
descending ; and when earth seems least friendly we most 



The Silence of Christ. 139 

feel that heaven opens to us, as it did to Jacob. In fee- 
bleness of health, sometimes, the weight of the bodily 
frame seems to be taken off, whether in delirium or in 
vision we cannot tell ; but faith brightens her eagle eye, 
and sees far into the silent things of death, and some- 
times in answer to prayer we have been conscious of 
more than an earthly presence, as in the silence a hand 
unseen was placed in ours and a voiceless peace was 
brought so near that we could almost feel the eternal 
breath upon our brows. This is a silent joy, for it is un- 
speakable. Silence knows more of God than speech. 

" And to the wayworn pilgrim here 
More kindred seems that perfect peace 

Than the full chants of joy to hear, 
Roll on, and never, never cease. 

' From earthly agonies set free, 

Tired with the path too slowly trod, 
May such a silence welcome me 
Into the palace of my God." 



JACOB'S VISION. 

And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because 
the sun was set ; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for 
his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. — Gen. xxviii, u. 

JACOB had just left home alone under a sense of guilt. 
In a vision on the way he saw angels, heard the voice 
of God, and was conscious of the divine presence. 
When he was alone at Bethel in the stillness of the night, 
with stones for his pillow and the stars for his covering, 
he witnessed scenes and heard voices which transcend 
our ordinary experiences. Sleep may have so closed the 
senses as to have permitted the activity of the spirit, 
which may have " roamed abroad, winged and observant." 
" And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the 
earth, and the top of it reached to heaven : and behold 
the angels of God ascending and descending on it." 

There is a general agreement in the belief that the 
patriarch thus discovered, as one has put it, " that the 
world in which he lived was closely related toother worlds, 
and that there were constant interjourneyings of celes- 
tial beings going on between other systems and the 
lonely spot on which he rested his weary head." The 
Bible is full of this doctrine. The pages of Scripture are 
well-nigh as full of angels as those of Homer are full of 
gods. They reveal much concerning their nature, capac- 
ities, characters, classes, numbers, ministries, and states. 

And while there is nothing in nature, philosophy, or 
experience to contradict this doctrine — that the intelli- 



Jacob's Vision. 141 

gences of other worlds have a connection with man — 
there is much that confirms it. It would seem that the 
material universe is everywhere related, that the mem- 
bers of the human body are not more inseparably con- 
nected than are the most distant planets and systems of 
immensity. There is a ladder connecting our earth with 
every atom of the remotest world, and there are influ- 
ences passing to and fro between them. We cannot, 
therefore, suppose that there is no connection between 
the various parts of the spiritual universe. If dead 
atoms can by laws of gravitation send their influence 
into worlds which no telescope can reach, then it is not 
hard to believe that active spirits can exert an influence 
beyond the boundary of their local home. All analogy 
favors the conception and leads to the belief that as the 
falling of a leaf may jar the universe, so a child's prayer 
may move " the plume of God's calm angel standing in 
the sun." 

A belief in the relationship of inhabitants, as well as of 
worlds, has been common in all ages. Egyptians, Greeks, 
and Romans believed in a mysterious connection with in- 
visible beings. Children indicate this tendency. It ap- 
pears as an active instinct everywhere among the sim- 
ple and uncultivated. At the same time some of the 
wisest and most cultivated, as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, 
and Confucius have held this faith. Probably there are 
few if any persons who have not been conscious of sud- 
den thoughts and feelings which they could trace to no 
source, explain by no mental laws — thoughts and feelings 
which have not been produced but imported ; they are 
felt to be strangers, not offspring. " We seem to be 
their thoroughfares, and not their home." Yet they in- 
fluence us, prompt us to take momentous steps, for 



142 Pulpit and Platform. 

nothing wields such a mastery over us as a thought, 
whatever be its origin or relationship. May it not be 
true that these unaccounted for and unexplained im- 
pressions come to us from other beings, inhabiting other 
worlds ? 

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. 

All these with ceaseless praise His works behold both night and day." 

There are powers and principalities in heavenly places, 
which are to be taught by the Church the manifold wis- 
dom of God. May not these have been in the mind of 
the Saviour when he spake of " other sheep, not of this 
fold ? " 

We know that there are many creatures on the earth 
which are utterly unconscious of the existence of man. 
May it not be equally true that man is and must be un- 
conscious of much that is above and about him ? that 
he is as little conscious of the angel who guards his sleep 
as is the worm of the human being who watches the 
mysterious weaving of its silken shroud ? The coral in- 
sect is utterly unconscious of even the existence of the 
race for whose ultimate benefit it builds its reefs and 
islands, for it never knows of the being of beauty who 
shall wear its work in decoration, or of the men who 
shall anchor their great ships to its foundation or tread 
its broad surface in their pride. Yet worms and insects 
and men exist, and though the lower may not know or 
perceive the higher they have relationships. 

While the worlds are represented as connected by the 
ladder God is represented as having relations to them 
all — and "the Lord stood above it." This has been 
claimed to represent God as the sovereign of all, and the 
ladder to represent to us what we term second causes. 



Jacob's Vision. 143 

If so, then this position assigned to God is equivalent to 
saying that he is above all instrumentalities and moral 
agencies. He was above the ladder and the angels. 
However long the chain of secondary causes may be, 
God is over them all. There is not a link in the chain 
that he does not command, nor is there an angel or agent 
of any rank or grade who steps on any stair of that great 
ladder that is not under his control. He is the spirit 
in every wheel of nature's grand machinery. So that 
whether creation was a spontaneous bound into com- 
pleted being or a slow procession of evolutions from the 
womb of the morning, in either hypothesis God was 
creator, God stood above the ladder. Thus all events 
and all causes are at his disposal ; " for by him were all 
things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, 
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or do- 
minions, or principalities, or powers : all things were 
created by him, and for him : and he is before all things, 
and by him all things consist " — (Col. i, 16, 17). 

The Lord is also represented as saying, " I am the 
Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac." 
This has been claimed to present God as the friend of 
man. So that the blessings here vouchsafed to Jacob 
were in reality blessings for humanity. In the seed here 
promised we have the great prophets, reformers, and 
philanthropists of the world, the men without whom 
the world would have been a pandemonium. We have 
here included even the Saviour of men. So that the right 
idea of life, the true theory of virtue, the correct system 
of worship, the effectual means of quickening and devel- 
opment, salvation, all come to us through Jacob the Jew. 

It may be well for us in passing to remember the in- 
fluence which the lineal descendants of this one man 



144 Pulpit and Platform. 

have exerted. Jews have been the financial monarchs 
of the world. They largely occupy the professional 
chairs of Germany, and from Neander to Wehle are 
famous, and as Disraeli says of his race, " After a thou- 
sand struggles, after acts of heroic courage that Rome 
has never equaled, deeds of divine patriotism that 
Athens, Sparta, and Carthage have never excelled, we 
have endured fifteen hundred years of supernatural slav- 
ery, during which every service that can degrade or de- 
stroy man has been the destiny that we have sustained 
and baffled. The Hebrew child has entered adoles- 
cence only to learn that he was the pariah of the un- 
grateful Europe that owes to him the best part of its laws, 
a fine portion of its literature, all its religion." Admitting 
only a part of this claim, we should be compelled to ad- 
mit that the seed of Jacob has been " as the dust of the 
earth," and has " spread abroad to the west, and to the 
east, and to the north, and to the south," and that 
in that seed have " all the families of the earth been 
blessed." In all time they have been a peculiar people, 
marked in physiognomy, separate in nationality, wan- 
derers, amassers of property, busy in trade, conspicuous 
in art, potent in national politics, adhering to their early 
traditions, boasting to-day as they did two thousand 
years ago, " We have Abraham to our father," as imply- 
ing, moreover, that Abraham was the friend of God. 
The boasted genealogies of Europe's proudest thrones 
are but of yesterday compared with theirs who were 
carried in the patriarch's loins; and in fulfillment of this 
ancient promise made to Jacob in the vision they are a 
" chosen generation, a royal stock." And, however de- 
spised and persecuted, they have been a blessing to the 
world at large. 



Jacob's Vision. 145 

I dwell with pleasure on the literal fulfillment of this 
ancient promise in lines apart from those on which spirit- 
ual gifts have come through them to us and all men. It 
steadies my faith in things spiritual to find confirmation 
in things temporal, and I am all the more persuaded of 
the truth of all prophecy when I can trace in parallel 
lines God working in redemption, the promise to the 
race fulfilled in Christ, the promises to the nations made 
complete in Israel. 

This vision truly proclaims the fact that God is the 
friend of man. And there are two considerations which 
chiefly indicate that we are heirs inheriting the blessing of 
God's friendship. One of these facts is the continuance 
of the sinful race in such a world as ours. Transgressors 
of human law are deprived of liberty, bound in chains, 
immured in dungeons, denied luxuries and comforts. 
But though we have broken divine laws we are sumptu- 
ously provided for. The earth is spread for us with ver- 
dure, the skies are hung over us in beauty, the air is 
vocal with melody, and rich and varied blessings fall in 
copious showers upon our path. This is not the treat- 
ment of justice, but of kindness and of love, and when 
viewed in connection with the means used for our moral 
restoration forms a strong proof of the continued friend- 
ship of God. As to the means used for spiritual and 
moral redemption, they transcend our thoughts. " God 
spared not his own Son ; " he " so loved us ; " he " bore 
our sorrows and carried our griefs;" expired under the 
weight of our sins ; and when he rose triumphant from 
his contest with our last enemy he sent to us the Holy 
Ghost, who has been waiting, knocking, pleading, tarry- 
ing for us to let him into our affections and prove his 
love for us. God is still the friend of man ; and the man 
10 



146 Pulpit and Platform. 

who has a true idea of life, who reads the true interpre- 
tation of the patriarch's vision, sees God everywhere. 
The world is to him the organ of an infinite mind, 
not the mere agglomeration of blind atomic forces 
acting apart from supervisory intelligence. He be- 
holds an exquisite combination of forces impinging 
everywhere upon each other with God's hand upon the 
spring of every movement. He sees God above the 
ladder directing every angel, every force or influence, 
that either ascends or descends along the mystic steps. 
He regards man as the special object of heavenly aid 
and help, and not as either too mean for the divine 
notice or benefit of divine love. Man in this view is no 
pitiful orphan or adjudged reprobate, but the object of 
divine care, as child of the heavenly Father. 

This thought of the divine Fatherhood necessitates the 
recognition of human brotherhood, and so links men to 
each other as it links all to God. Under the inspiration 
of this teaching we learn to look on man as under special 
favor, and wherever man is found, there we behold one 
whom the infinite Father befriends. He may be all un- 
conscious of God's care, he may not know his Father's 
name, nor even that he has a Father ; but still, despite his 
degradation and his ignorance, he is in God's care, and it 
is both the duty and the joy of others better taught and 
more enlightened to instruct him in his rights, to help to 
invest him with his true dignity, to enable him to exer- 
cise the high privilege accorded to all men of looking up 
to heaven, and joining with all other human tongues in 
uttering that best of all claims to care and love, " Our 
Father which art in heaven." 

This care is not generalized, but individual and partic- 
ular: "And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee 



Jacob's Vision. 147 

in all places whither thou goest." I am not merely with 
the universe, with humanity at large, but with thee, and 
not with thee only in some places and on some occasions, 
but in all places whither thou goest ; thus teaching a 
recognition of divine providence over individuals and 
persons. This Bible doctrine accords with our reason, 
for it is reasonable to suppose that He who condescended 
to create will deign to care for the work of his hands ; 
that He who endowed man with a soul capable of pro- 
ducing thoughts to shake kingdoms, form empires, and 
influence generations will superintend its operations. 
While according this, reason also asserts the impossibility 
of the infinite Father, who is the fountain of all love, 
ever deserting his offspring. And so in the long list of 
interventions for humanity we have not only the ark for 
the race, and the pillars of fire and cloud for the nations, 
but " the ram in a thicket" for a father's sacrifice, and the 
babe in a basket for a mother's love, an ass speaking to a 
hesitating prophet, and a cock crowing for an apostate 
apostle; a divine form in a heated furnace for the Hebrew 
children, ravens for Elijah, an angel for imprisoned Peter, 
and a saving rope and basket for the persecuted Paul. 
Personal, individual, and particular are the interventions 
of God for his children. 

Then, too, conscience is individual and particular as 
pertaining to one alone, and not general as belonging to 
an aggregation. Thus all conditions of consciousness 
are proofs of man's personal relations to a personal God. 
The terrors of remorse, the prayers of distress, the sense 
of guilt, all show an underlying feeling on man's part 
that God is with him individually, personally. So, too, 
the sense of approbation, the approval of conscience, the 
witness of the Spirit, are not to the general propriety and 



148 Pulpit and Platform. 

well-ordering of humanity, but to the personal relation 
of the individual, leading to the belief that even " the 
steps," that is, the least personal movements, " of a good 
man are ordered by the Lord." Such consciousness per- 
tains to the true vision of life, is part of it, enters as a 
factor influential in controlling the result and at the 
same time determining its justness. The individualized 
consciousness enables us to make personal claims for 
personal needs, prevents our falling into despair in ad- 
versity or sinking in the waves of despondency. It forti- 
fies us in temptation, strengthens us in weakness, and 
enables us to cry with the Psalmist, " Have mercy upon 
me, . . . blot out my transgressions. Wash me thorough- 
ly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. . . . 
Purge me with hyssop. . . . Make me to hear joy and 
gladness. . . . Create in me a clean heart, O God ; and 
renew a right spirit within me. . . . Restore unto me the 
joy of thy salvation ; and uphold me with thy free Spirit. 
. . . O Lord, open thou my lips ; and my mouth shall 
show forth thy praise." 

Such interpretations of the patriarch's vision give a 
solemnity to our earthly position. Jacob said, " How 
dreadful is this place ! " Feelings of reverence and awe 
came over him of which he had never been conscious 
before ; and this feeling of awe resulted from the dis- 
covery that God was in the place, that he was in God's 
house and at the very boundary of the spiritual universe, 
at the very door through which spirits were passing to 
and fro. This was a new epoch in his history. " And I 
knew it not" — I never felt that God and the spiritual 
universe were so real and so near before. Yet what was 
his experience had always been the fact, though unre- 
alized. From infancy to that hour, step by step, God 



Jacob's Vision. 149 

had been with him. The very world he lived in was 
the house of God, ever filled with his presence, but 
he did not realize it until now. And so it is with the 
masses of men ; God is ever with them, in every step 
they take they walk in his holy presence. He is with 
them in the market, in the field, in the chamber, in their 
halls and haunts of pleasure, but they know it not ; 
hence their want of solemnity, their frivolity, their 
wicked ways. They frequent groves without thought 
that they were " God's first temples; " the overhanging 
branches loaded with verdure and weighed down with 
fruit speak to them no words of the " All-Bountiful." 
They gaze upon the waters without appreciating, except 
as poetic rhapsody, the worldling's thought who spoke 
of ocean as " the mirror where the Almighty's form 
glasses itself in tempests." When the conviction of 
God's presence penetrates them the whole aspect of life 
changes ; they wake from their past life as from a dream, 
and exclaim, " Behold, God is in this place ; and I knew it 
not." This is the dawn of a new era in experience ; hence- 
forth they tread the earth as if it were the temple of God, 
with a serious step and a worshipful heart. Sometimes 
this new epoch in history is a memorable epoch in life. 
" Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the 
stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a 
pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it." This was for 
a memorial. This is indeed the most remarkable crisis 
in a man's life. It is a birth into a new spiritual world. 
It is the first step in the line of endless progress ; thence- 
forth his course is on, on, on, forever; on, outrunning 
stars in their courses; on, overleaping systems as they 
move ; on, unlimited by dying ; on, on with God ! 

That was a wonderful crisis when the man born blind 



150 Pulpit and Platform. 

received sight from Christ. The earth around him had 
always been robed in beauty, and the glorious heavens 
had always been pouring radiance on his path, but he 
had never seen earth nor sky before; a mother had 
nursed him in tenderness, but he had never seen her 
smile, and wonder must have been busy to explain why 
her tears fell as she bent over his sightless orbs. With 
the opening of his eyes he must have felt himself 
ushered into a new existence. How beautiful the earth, 
how grand the heavens, how sweet that mother's smile ! 
So when God opens the moral eye of man we see him 
everywhere, realizing a far greater and sublimer change. 
Looking on the earth, 

" There seems a voice in every gale, 

A tongue in every flower, 
Which tells, O Lord, the wondrous tale 

Of thy almighty power. 
The birds that rise on quivering wing 

Proclaim their Maker's praise; 
And all the mingling sounds of spring 

To thee an anthem raise." 

A man never forgets this, and as Jacob reared a pillar to 
commemorate his vision, so he will ask, 

" Shall I be mute, great God, alone, 

Midst nature's loud acclaim? 
Shall not my heart with answering voice 

Breathe forth thy holy name? 
All nature's debt is small to mine : 

Nature shall cease to be ; 
Thou gavest — proof of love divine — 

Immortal life to me." 

What Jacob saw in a vision every man should see in 
every moment of his wakeful life. For the questions are 
started, Are we not as truly with God and in the 
spiritual world now as we shall ever be ? Is there a 



Jacob's Vision. 151 

world more truly his house than this ? Is not this a 
thoroughfare of spirits? Do they not now minister unto 
the heirs of salvation ? They are about us ; their noiseless 
feet may even now be treading these aisles. 

" They visit us in dreams, 

They glide across our memories 
Like shadows over streams ; 
We sometimes hear their whispered voice 

Our names in sadness call." 

All we need is the opening of the spiritual eye, which sin 
has closed ; the realizing — that is, spirit perception — of 
the nearness of God and the presence of his messengers. 
Ah, could we always receive all that he sends us from 
him how it would help us to be content! If we were, as 
we might be, sure that he ordered all our experiences, 
then we might always say, " Blessed is he that cometh 
in the name of the Lord." 

" Who is the nngel that cometh ? Life ? 

Let us not question what he brings, peace or strife ; 

Under the shade of his mighty wings, 

One by one, are his secrets told ; 

One by one, lit by the rays of each morning sun, 

Shall a new flower its petals unfold, 

With a mystery hid in its heart of gold ; 

We will arise and go forth to greet him, 

Singing, gladly, with one accord, 

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. 

" Who is this angel that cometh ? Joy ? 

Look at his glittering rainbow wings ; no alloy 

Lies in the radiant gift he brings. 

Tender and sweet, he is come to-day, tender and sweet, 

While chains of love on his silver feet 

Will hold him in lingering fond delay. 

But greet him quickly, he will not stay ; 

Soon he will leave us ; but though for others 

All his brightest treasures are stored, 

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. 



152 Pulpit and Platform. 

" Who is this angel that cometh ? Pain ? 

Let us arise and go forth to greet him. Not in vain 

Is the summons come for us to meet him ; 

He will stay, and darken our sun ; 

He will stay, a desolate night, a weary day. 

Since in that shadow our work is done, 

And in that shadow our crowns are won, 

Let us say still, while his bitter chalice 

Slowly into our hearts is poured, 

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. 

" Who is this angel that cometh ? Death ? 

But do not shudder, and do not fear ; hold your breath ; 

For a kingly presence is drawing near. 

Cold and bright is his flashing steel ; 

Cold and bright, the smile that comes like a starry light 

To calm the terror and grief we feel ; 

He comes to help and to save and to heal. 

Then let us, baring our hearts and kneeling, 

Sing while we wait the angel's sword, 

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 

Now unto Him who hath taught us in this vision 
(i) the existence of other worlds, and our relation to 
them, (2) his own sovereignty over all, (3) his special 
friendship for man in temporal blessings through the 
Jews and in spiritual gifts through Christ, (4) exercised 
in pardons, providences, and consciousness, (5) who has 
thus made life solemn and worshipful, to him be glory 
and honor forever and ever. Amen. 



ONE GOD IN NATURE AND IN GRACE. 

Whether is easier to say. — Matt, ix, 5 ; Mark ii, 9 ; Luke v, 23. 

This incident is narrated in substantially the same 
language but with more or less minuteness of detail by 
three of the evangelists. It is the account of a double 
miracle, which Christ performed in acknowledgment of 
the pressure brought to bear upon him by the con- 
fidence and zeal of some who had witnessed his other 
wonderful cures. There was a man whose case was 
that of a hopeless and helpless paralytic, who, though 
unable to walk, had sufficient power of endurance to per- 
mit his being carried by his friends to Jesus, whose power 
and kindness had been noised abroad. His friends say, 
" We will get this palsied companion of ours into contact 
with this man of power." Great crowds have gathered 
about the place where he is performing wonders and 
teaching new truths. ' " Entrance by the door," says 
Neander, " was impossible ; but the oriental mode of 
building afforded a means of access, to which they at 
once had recourse. Passing up the stairs which led 
from the outside to the flat roof of the house, they made 
an opening by removing part of the tiles and let the 
couch down into the upper chamber. No one knows 
the distance they bore him, the repulses they met, or 
the sneers and insults of the Pharisees and doctors as 
they pressed their way, the amount of contrivance and 
physical exertion brought out by their generous en- 
deavor." They had absolutely determined that access 



154 Pulpit and Platform. 

should be made for their friend ; these four who bore 
him were " violent men, who would take the kingdom 
of heaven by force." 

Nothing but a deep-seated living faith in Christ's 
power to heal could have stimulated them to this effort 
or sustained them in it. Christ " saw their faith," recog- 
nized its claim, forgave the sins of the sick man, and, 
distinctly challenging attention to his words, he miracu- 
lously justified them by saying, " Arise, and take up thy 
bed, and walk." "And the man arose, took up his bed, 
and went forth before them all ; a new current of life ran 
through his veins, he stood up buoyant and hale ; and 
he who had been carried of four walked to his home 
with the strong step of a vigorous manhood and the 
bounding heart of a pardoned saint." 

This man was brought to Christ to be healed of his 
physical infirmity. No human skill had succeeded, no 
knowledge of the healing art had been sufficient, no at- 
tention of loving friends had availed. What it was im- 
possible for man to do Christ does ; and he does it by 
freeing the man from his sins, a thing which it was 
equally impossible for man to do. 

Both acts necessitated the exercise of a divine power ; 
a power equal to creative force was needed to change 
the character of a created being. There was no con- 
fusion or doubt in the mind of the paralytic on questions 
which concerned Christ's ability and power to both par- 
don and heal ; he was pardoned and healed, he felt the 
heavenly influence, he " had the witness in himself." 
The words of Christ, " Son, be of good cheer, thy sins 
be forgiven thee," carried their own evidence into the 
deepest consciousness of his soul. " They broke on the 
chaos of his need with omnific energy, brightened his 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 155 

gloomy sky with sunny azure, tuned the jarring and dis- 
cordant chords of his heart into music." The mighty 
influence of these words on his experience was indubi- 
table ; he was conscious of the change, but he alone could 
be conscious of it; to make others believe it, to satisfy 
those who could not be conscious of his personal experi- 
ences, there must be added demonstration. The wonder- 
ing friends and the sneering skeptics who stood by re- 
joiced or thought it blasphemy, according to their mood. 
We can readily imagine the thoughts of the mere on- 
lookers ; they probably said, " It is very easy for this pre- 
tender to pronounce the man forgiven ; he knows that we 
have no means of successfully disproving his blasphemous 
assertion ; words are cheap. The poor man wants to be 
healed, and he can't heal him ; that we could see, if he 
could only do it ; but he can't do what we can see, and 
attempts to hide his failure by pretending to do some- 
thing which we could not see, even if he had the ability 
to do it, which we utterly deny, since it is a divine pre- 
rogative. It is far easier to say that the man is forgiven 
than to cure him of his palsy." " And Jesus knowing 
their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your 
hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be 
forgiven thee ; or to say, Arise, and walk?" as if he had 
declared, " It is a greater work to forgive sins than to 
cure bodies ; but you are too gross and worldly to under- 
stand this, and in pity for your ignorance and stupidity 
I will do what even you can appreciate." " That ye 
may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth 
to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say 
unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into 
thine house. And immediately he rose up before them, 
and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his 



156 Pulpit and Platform. 

own house, glorifying God. And they were all amazed." 
The bodily healing having been given as a kind of evi- 
dence which they had challenged, they were bound to 
accept it. 

But this gives no warrant for belief that bodily cures 
are related to the plan of salvation in any such way as 
to be at the command of personal faith, as is the forgive- 
ness of sin. We may not demand by faith what is not 
pledged to faith ; we may not appropriate what is not 
put at our disposal. God's will may be better served 
by endurance of suffering than by deliverance from it, 
even as the Captain of our salvation was made perfect 
by it. God's wisdom may see better issues for his cause 
than would be realized by healing. What God may do 
we must not demand that he shall do, and so constitute 
ourselves judges both of his will and of his judgment. 
Cures inexplicable by present knowledge have been and 
are wrought ; this has been abundantly and equally 
proved at Lourdes and at Boston and elsewhere. And 
yet it is a well-known fact that the mind acts on the 
body through imagination, volition, expectant atten- 
tion, as well as through fear, joy, anxiety. But what 
is essential or necessary to effect cures is neither a 
philosophical theory (as claimed by mind curers), nor 
a theological doctrine (as claimed by faith healers). 
These wonderful effects of the mind upon the body 
occur always in much the same way, and generally 
to the same kind of people, no matter what the sur- 
roundings may be, and no matter what interpretation 
is put upon them — nervous, sentimental, impulsive, 
fractious — in short, those who possess the elements of 
character which easily develop fanaticism. And there- 
fore we are justified in concluding that they are the 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 157 

result of general laws, as yet unknown, while operating 
upon human beings everywhere, and though the process 
of action may be as yet undiscovered. Still there is nei- 
ther magic nor miracle about them. 

Curious effects in psycho-therapeutics have occurred 
everywhere and in all times, but, of course, have had 
differing interpretations. They form a curious study, as 
they occasionally reappear from the times of ancient 
Egypt to the present day. " They have been noted in 
the temple courts of Isis and of Ra ; in the mysteries of 
Eleusis ; in the professed miracles of a Hohenlohe, an 
Abbe Paris, a Zouave Jacob, just as they are in a meta- 
physician or faith healer or an assumed ' Christian scien- 
tist ' of the present day." 

Many of these cures are claimed to be wrought by 
faith ; but faith in what, faith in whom ? In the saint 
worshiped as our Lady of Lourdes ? In Christ ? Where 
did he ever authorize such expectation ? On the con- 
trary, he taught and exemplified the duty of patient en- 
durance ; he did not heal his own apostle Paul, though 
Paul besought him thrice to do so. Paul did not heal 
Trophimus, but left him sick at Miletum, and expresses 
his grief at the prolonged illness of Epaphroditus. Christ 
gives no assurance of bodily healing. This case does 
not warrant it. He has wrought out eternal salvation 
from sin for us and placed it at the control of faith. 
" Whosoever believeth shall be saved." 

He can both save and cure ; in this case he did both. 
What did he intend to teach us by doing both? What 
connection, if any, exists between these two facts of 
soul pardon and bodily healing? 

They were two distinct exercises of power. Were 
they the expression of two distinct powers? Were the 



15$ Pulpit and Platform. 

two acts emanations from different sources of authority? 
Are there diversities of power ? Is God one, or multiple ? 
Are there diverse or differing energies of powers in the 
physical and spiritual realms ? Or did the Master intend 
in this incident to set forth the fact that " the Lord our 
God is one Lord," and that all the power seen in opera- 
tion anywhere is the power of the one God ? 

We are indebted to the modern scientists for a theory 
which they call the " conservation and correlation of 
forces," which may serve us in our inquiry. By these two 
terms, " conservation " and " correlation," two entirely 
different things are meant. By the " conservation of 
physical forces " scientific men mean indestructibility of 
matter. If we may understand by ''matter" whatever 
God has made we can readily accept this statement, for 
it is comformable to the teaching of revelation. God, 
who made the world and all things therein, made 
nothing for the purpose of destruction, but so linked all 
created things that they tend toward preservation ; they 
disappear sometimes or vanish from our view, but they 
do not cease to be. In some form, somewhere, they are 
subject to his order ; they obey his will. The whole 
teaching of the Bible concerning the resurrection of the 
human body implies this ; God keeps in being whatever 
he has put in being; he conserves. Translating the sci- 
entific term "force" to mean what it can only mean to 
Christian minds — God — the theory of the conservation 
of force is simply the Bible doctrine of preservation or 
providence. The term " correlation of force " is used to 
express the different directions of force or power in exer- 
cise or operation. The scientist says, " Certain forces 
have existence; we may see their estimate, their value, 
measure them, weigh them, calculate their influence on 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 159 

other objects or forces, and therefore we believe in their 
existence, admit the fact of their being. They are sure 
to produce in their operation certain other forces or 
movements in the universe. Change in the direction of 
force does not lessen or diminish the amount of force ; 
there is, therefore, a constant equation of forces. Corre- 
lation is not diminution, but change of direction. There 
is nothing but force ; its transmutations or changes of 
direction in its operation account for everything, explain 
all things." When we ask for illustrations of his mean- 
ing he may show us how to ignite a fire by the rapid 
motion of two sticks or by revolving the point of a hard 
stick upon a prepared disk of wood, and tell us that the 
force expended in revolving the stick is transformed or 
correlated into heat, which is generated at its point ; or 
he may tell us that the burning of coal under the boiler 
of a steam engine will convert the water in the boiler 
into vapor, thus generating steam, which, by the applica- 
tion of machinery, may produce motion. Heat is thus 
correlated into motion, and these men of exactness affirm 
that on the application of brakes to stop the motion the 
heat developed by friction is the exact equivalent of the 
heat which under the boiler generated the steam. 

Assuming these statements to be correct — and I see 
no valid reason to dispute their correctness— we may 
find in them a clew to the right interpretation of the 
double miracle under discussion. 

God, as the Author of the universe, put into exercise 
all the forces and all the power which we see in opera- 
tion ; and it is a great mistake to suppose that " all 
power " is not God's power, in whatever direction it may 
move or on whatever line it may be projected ; whether 
he creates a star or wheels a comet ; whether he opens 



160 Pulpit and Platform. 

the bursting bud into the fragrant flower or liberates 
the pent-up energies which produce the tremor of the 
earthquake and the belch of the volcano ; whether he 
drops the evanescent dew or lifts the surging tides of 
ocean in varying uniformity. 

It would also be an equally fatal mistake to deny to 
the Originator of "all power" the ability to transfer or 
correlate power, change the direction of its manifestation 
from one line or plane to any other. "All power" in- 
cludes direction as well as organization. 

There are three principal lines or directions on which 
we are accustomed to behold the exhibitions of his 
energy and to study the outgoings of his power. We 
have been told of his formative power in creation, we 
perceive his conserving power in preservation or provi- 
dence, and we know of his redemptive power in salva- 
tion. But in our blindness or short-sightedness we are 
apt to discuss these acts as though they were different 
powers or the operations of different forces or beings, 
acting at different times in different methods. Rightly 
understood and interpreted, they only exhibit one God 
moving on different lines : in one direction he appears 
to be creating ; in another, preserving ; in another, re- 
deeming. But it is always one God ; " there is none else 
beside him." 

God's highest work is man, and his grandest work for 
man is redemption. He has given to man a nature 
capable of apprehending the forms of manifested power, 
and so man has three lines on which God can act with 
reference to him. Man has a physical nature, the direct 
expression of creative power ; man has an intelligent soul, 
through which and on which God acts in conserving or 
preserving the result of his creative work ; and in addition 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 161 

man has an inbreathed spiritual life, capable of apprehend- 
ing the operation of God in salvation or redemption. 

When, therefore, Christ speaks of " forgiving sins " 
and " healing bodies " as a mere question of " whether 
is easier to say," he simply asserts that it is no more 
difficult for God to change the direction of the force 
with which he operates — namely, his power — from crea- 
tion to providence, or from providence to redemption, 
than for a man to change the form of speech with which 
he expresses these changes ; " whether is easier to say " 
is the only question. God can with equal facility move on 
either line or change from one line to another with equal 
ease. All power is God himself, whichever way he moves. 

The practical belief of such a truth as this is calculated 
to be eminently helpful to us all. We may be greatly 
assisted by the realization of the thought that it is the 
same Being who creates, preserves, redeems. God is 
the actor and agent in all directions. It must be help- 
ful to know that all force, all power, wherever mani- 
fested, wherever displayed, is the expression and mani- 
festation of one God, who, acting or moving in varied 
directions, may employ all the power anywhere in exer- 
cise on the line of our personal needs. The power of 
creation and providence may thus be obtained for salva- 
tion ; the change of direction is as easy as a change in 
the form of speech ; " whether is easier to say " is the 
only question. We should, therefore, study God's works 
— look into the universe and familiarize ourselves with 
God's " mighty acts ; " see him speaking light into being, 
stretching out the heavens over the empty space, poising 
the earth upon nothing, exercising the original and 
fontal force by which all being became possible and act- 
ual. Let us grasp these facts when we come to ask for 
11 



1 62 Pulpit and Platform. 

pardon of sin, and it must be a help, nay, a joy, to believe 
that God, who created all things, can put the power of 
world-making into the act of forgiveness. 

We have the right to take the truths of Scripture de- 
scriptive of God's power as he moves over the mighty 
spaces peopling them with worlds and bring them into 
the line of our personal lives, and to expect God to give 
us on spiritual lines manifestations of power correspond- 
ing to physical forces in the universe in creative acts. 
If what I need for my spiritual life is a necessity for its 
continuance, if I feel that without the exercise of divine 
power that life in me is likely to be extinguished, then 
familiarity with what God does in the preservation of 
worlds helps me in the line on which my prayer is urged. 
And when I see what God has done for the universe — 
how in all the eternities there has been no jar and no 
confusion, all starry systems moving in harmony; sun, 
moon, and stars " set for times and seasons," as never- 
failing hands on God's great dial plate, moving with ex- 
actness and precision ; as we read in the Psalms, " The 
heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork, Day unto day uttereth speech, 
and night unto night showeth knowledge " — I can appre- 
hend with greater clearness how " the perfect law of the 
Lord can convert the soul." With the thought that 
the God to whom I pray controls the universe, I kneel 
with all creation beneath me and all providence above 
me, and claim and expect the continuance of that spirit- 
ual life which, as his gift, must be his care. 

" This God is the God we adore, 

Our faithful, unchangeable friend, 
"Whose love is as great as his power, 

And neither knows measure nor end." 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 163 

Am I needy? Is my soul as " a dry and thirsty land, 
where no water is?" I remember that he preserves all 
animal and vegetable life by sending his rain upon the 
just and the unjust alike, and that he has promised to 
refresh me with showers of blessing. I am helped by 
knowing that while all the coal which could be raised by 
man from the bowels of the earth in a thousand years 
would not, in burning, give out sufficient heat to evapo- 
rate the earth's rainfall for one single year, yet God lifts 
it by a sunbeam. I know that he can use that power for 
the relief of my intelligent, thirsting spirit as readily as 
to nourish a parched clod of the ground ; it is simply a 
question of "whether is easier to say." 

USEFUL FOR PROGRESSIVE GROWTH. 

There are many things in the line of physical observa- 
tion which are well calculated to assist us in our spiritual 
life. But to profit by them we must cease to discrimi- 
nate between the source of spiritual life and of all other 
life. Intellectual life, physical life, and spiritual life are 
only forms of human life. They are not diverse or differ- 
ing lives ; they have one origin ; they are all interested 
in one destiny. For the perfecting of our Christian life 
it is needed that we bring our spiritual living into close 
and intimate contact with our intellectual and physical 
functions; so that when a man feels that his spirit has 
actually apprehended God his intellect shall rightly con- 
ceive of God, and his body, that is, his physical nature, 
shall be subject to the will of God ; and so the man shall 
be sanctified " wholly, body, soul, and spirit." This 
would put an end to the unnatural divorce, all too com- 
mon, of religion from morality, and it would also check 
the tendency to irreverence in thought which taints so 



164 Pulpit and Platform. 

sadly much of our literature. The soul is the organism 
whose function is to collate thought and information so 
as to work out right notions and conceptions of God and 
of our relations to him ; the body is the organ or in- 
strument whose function is to express by outward acts 
a complete subordination of conduct to character as 
enjoined of God ; the spirit is the endowment whose 
function is to relate us intimately with God, so that, 
though "no man hath seen God at any time," we may 
be conscious of his being and " of his dwelling in us." 
When we succeed in getting these ideas into their proper 
relations we shall be able to lead holy lives ; all in us 
must belong to God, be consecrated to God, and all lines 
of power will be open to us, the omnipotence of God will 
be our refuge and abode ; creative power may be exer- 
cised in the forgiveness of sin, in spiritual progress, and 
in securing the highest possible spiritual destiny. God, 
having made salvation possible for us by the exercise of 
a redemptive power, intends that souls so touched shall 
be developed and enlarged in their spheres and faculties 
until the moral likeness to himself shall be complete; 
and so he has put all creation and all providence back 
of the sinner's cry for pardon and the saint's plea for 
help, and lets men know that " all power in heaven and 
in earth " is his power, and that he can use it for their 
good, the line of action being simply a question of 
" whether is easier to say," while " he is able to do ex- 
ceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think." 

USEFUL FOR FUTURE ATTAINMENTS. 

God, having given spiritual life, conserves it. If he 
keeps in being all that he has made, if nothing is lost of 
what has been, then nothing need be lost of what may 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 165 

yet be. We may thus assure ourselves of the mainte- 
nance of any ground attained, or of any promise which 
is made attainable ; present realization is the basis for 
future expectation. " Hope maketh not ashamed, be- 
cause the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts ; " that 
is, the present experience is a guarantee of future bless- 
ings. The future may thus be assured to us, but our con- 
fidence will be in proportion to the strength of our con- 
viction of the unchangeableness of his plans and methods. 
If he destroys anything, we may be destroyed ; if he 
fails to conserve everything, we may in turn fall out of his 
plan. How shall we fortify our confidence ? How reas- 
sure our faith? Let us summon nature and her scien- 
tific interpreters to our aid. 

Science has demonstrated that there were long cycles 
of duration in which the earth was being fitted for the 
abode of man ; ages, perhaps, in the which there was 
only the rank vegetation that was nourished by the cool- 
ing earth and the damp vapors it exhaled, with no pos- 
sibility of an atmosphere that could sustain human life. 
This was the age of primeval and colossal forests, of 
gigantic ferns, and of such monstrous vegetable growths 
as are continually revealed to us by the excavations of 
explorers and seen in the fossilized remains exhumed. 
They were nourished by the light and heat, as are their 
tinier successors of to-day. Was the light which flecked 
them lost? Was the heat which entered into and pro- 
duced their structural growth dissipated ? Nay, not so. 
In the long procession of the ages those forests and the 
giant growths they shaded crumbled and decayed and 
were succeeded and overgrown by a new vegetation, 
which in turn disappeared, until all the original growths 
were weighed down and crushed by the myriad tons of 



1 66 Pulpit and Platform. 

pressure superimposed by the subsequent formations 
and growths, while the heat which had made them boun- 
tiful and the light which had made them beautiful were 
condensed and solidified ; and now we dig into the hill- 
sides, or drill into the rocks, or delve into the mines, and 
thence bring up as coal or oil the sunshine and the 
warmth of prehistoric, times, not one ray of light lost, not 
one minim of heat dissipated and gone, all bountifully 
and mysteriously stored up for future necessities, and all 
within reach of man, who, in their resurrection and adapta- 
tion to his use, blesses the world with this Easter of light 
and heat and makes a morn of joy for his temporary home. 
Again, science has demonstrated the existence of stars 
so distant that no eye of man has ever seen them and 
no telescopic power has ever brought them into the field 
of vision. And men of science, wedded to exactness of 
statement, have demonstrated to us the hour, nay, the 
minute, in the distant future when that light shall reach 
us and first come within the limit of our observation. 
From the hour when the stars were made it has been 
journeying, it has passed through immeasurable space; 
been retarded, it may be, by the infinite coldness of those 
unexplored voids ; been accelerated, perhaps, by the near 
approach of comets or of wandering suns, but has nei- 
ther been dissolved into nothingness nor congealed into 
solidity. God holds it ; it has acquired a velocity and 
speed in the ages of its journeying almost incalculable. 
Yet when it reaches us it will fall so gently on the eyelid 
of a sleeping babe as scarce to wake him from his rosy 
dreams. It is on its way, it is coming toward us, it will 
yet reach us. It may come down into the eye of some 
poor child looking to God for help and be the means of 
blessing to his crushed heart. 



One God in Nature and in Grace. 167 

Now, can it be that God, who takes sunbeams and im- 
prisons them in coal, who takes star rays and brings 
them through infinite space, that he may thus give light 
and warmth to the mere clouds beneath our feet — will he, 
can he, deny aught to the child of his own choosing, 
made in his own image, capable of appreciating the 
greatness of his works and developing the glory of his 
power, when the only question is, " Whether is easier to 
say x 

Discriminate between a God of creation, a God of 
providence, and a God of redemption, and none of this 
satisfaction and comfort will be ours. We separate the 
working power when we should only discriminate be- 
tween the lines on which the one power is working. It 
is not as though the power had ceased working because 
creative acts are no longer necessary. God, indeed, 
ceased from his work of creation, but his power is still 
going forth on providential lines, and creative force is 
correlated into redemptive acts. 

All existences are proofs of a still existent power, all 
worlds are demonstrations of abiding force, and so are 
pledges to us of his omnipotence to save. We have 
only to open the way for the Voice divine, by which he 
made the world, to enter our hearts, to renew our spirits, 
and to redeem our souls. 

As when the roseate light curtained the new-made 
world, in answer to God's call, the sons of God rejoiced, 
so when the " Light of the world " enters the soul, giving 
new relations, infusing new powers, power to become the 
sons of God, there is once more "joy in the presence of 
the angels." 

Those who witnessed this double exhibition of power 
" marveled and glorified God," saying, "We have seen 



1 68 Pulpit and Platform. 

strange things to-day." This pardon and this healing, 
both by one person, were strange things to those who 
had always separated in their thoughts between the God 
of nature and the God of grace, and had never known 
that, possessing all power, he worked at will on lines of 
providence or redemption. It would not be strange to 
us to-day if sinners should testify to the conscious recep- 
tion of pardon. The strange thing to us is in the fact 
that all men do not accept the full and free pardon 
offered by the God who created and has preserved all 
that he has made, and who pledges all his mightiness 
hitherto exerted in creation and providence for our re- 
demption. The fault is ours. God does not see our 
faith ; he will pardon our friends when he sees us busy 
in bringing them to him, that is, placing them on lines 
where his power is working. 

Self-absorbed, we live as though we had been saved 
for our own sakes, instead of recognizing the real truth 
that we are saved that we may be the means of saving 
others. We live as though all the omnipotence of God 
were needed to keep our souls out of hell and perdition, 
instead of rejoicing in the privilege of opening heaven's 
doors to all others. We need the interest in others 
which will now, as it did of old, challenge the attention 
of Christ — something grander than self-preservation ; 
something akin to the zeal and energy of the four who 
elbowed the crowd, climbed the stairs, tore off the roof, 
and let their friend down before Jesus. 

This would be an imitation of his own methods, 
"seeking and saving;" this would be an outgoing of the 
mighty power by which he is " able to subdue all things 
unto himself." 



A WOMAN'S INFLUENCE. 

So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. — Ruth i, 19. 

It is the time of the judges in Israel, and there is a 
famine in the land. Elimelech, with Naomi, his wife, 
and their two sons, resort in their extremity to Moab, 
and continue there. Elimelech died, and his sons both 
married in the land. The name of the wife of one was 
Orpah, and of the other Ruth. These names, signifying, 
the one "the open lipped," the other "full, satisfied," 
are suggestive of their distinctive characters. The one 
was ever ready with attestations of affection, demonstra- 
tive and exuberant in declarations, the other firm and 
true in action, with less of demonstration and more per- 
sistence, " steadfast-mindedness " in constancy. Their 
husbands both died, and Naomi, "the beautiful," was 
left alone with her two daughters-in-law in a strange 
land. Finding the situation insupportable, " Then she 
arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return 
from the country of Moab: for she had heard in the 
country of Moab how that the Lord had visited his 
people in giving them bread. Wherefore she went 
forth out of the place where she was, and her two 
daughters-in-law with her ; and they went on the way to 
return unto the land of Judah. And Naomi said unto 
her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each to her moth- 
er's house : the Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have 
dealt with the dead, and with me. The Lord grant you 
that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her 



170 Pulpit and Platform. 

husband. Then she kissed them ; and they lifted up 
their voice, and wept. And they said unto her, Surely 
we will return with thee unto thy people. And Naomi 
said, Turn again, my daughters: why will ye go with 
me? . . . Nay, my daughters ; for it gricveth me much for 
your sakes that the hand of the Lord is gone out against 
me. And they lifted up their voice, and wept again: 
and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law ; but Ruth clave 
unto her." 

Still more earnestly Naomi dissuaded Ruth: "And 
she said, Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto 
her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy 
sister-in-law. And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave 
thee, or to return from following after thee : for whither 
thou goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I will 
lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God 
my God : where thou diest, will I die, and there will I 
be buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught 
but death part thee and me. When she saw that she 
was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she left 
speaking unto her. So they two went until they came 
to Bethlehem." 

The language of Ruth is the embodiment of adhering 
affection and resolute choice of God's service. I know 
nothing in all the range of poetry more impressive and 
beautiful than the language she uses and the sentiment 
she expresses. First, she asserts the womanly love of 
her nature which led her to cling to Naomi in life and in 
death ; and in rising above this to the religious purpose 
to serve God she chooses God and his people without 
reservation, deliberately, in spite of the defection of her 
sister; and, more than this, she confirms her choice by 
a solemn oath, '• The Lord do so to me, and more also, if 



A Woman's Influence. 171 

aught but death part thee and me." Somewhat of the 
positiveness of her determination and expression may, 
and indeed must, have come from her constitutional en- 
dowment and habit. And yet these very elements of 
character might be supposed to have opposed her volun- 
tary expatriation and abandonment of household gods. 
We observe in her demeanor no manifestation of obsti- 
nacy nor persistence in self-will. " Entreat me not to 
leave thee " is her earnest supplication, as though she 
feared a command to "return from following after" 
Naomi, as if feeling that the sad persuasion of that des- 
olate woman would overcome her sense of duty. But 
when she sees the sad pleasure which her prayer affords 
her mother-in-law she becomes less plaintive and more 
pronounced and determined, and says, " Whither thou 
goest, I will go ; . . . thy people shall be my people " — I 
will leave the only home that I have known, the only 
friend I have ever had ; " thy God shall be my God " — I 
will adopt and profess thy religion, and all this, not for 
a day, nor for an hour of companionship as you start on 
this sad journey, but for a lifetime; "where thou diest, 
will I die, and there will I be buried." How the thought 
of those two graves, as yet unopened — the one for herself, 
and the other for the beautiful pleader by her side — must 
have moved the widow who had just closed the graves 
of her husband and her two sons ! She could no longer 
resist the appeal, and they went on together, the mother 
and the daughter cleaving to her, on their way toward 
Bethlehem. 

The heart of Naomi must have rejoiced at this mani- 
festation of affection ; she could see in it a reward for 
her own tenderness and love; she must have realized 
that God was blessing her for her own faithfulness. She 



172 Pulpit and Platform. 

had left home and native land to advance the inter- 
ests of her husband and her sons, and, now that they 
were gone, here was a direct return for this self-denial in 
the faithful Ruth, who had promised so solemnly to be 
hers till death. She had given herself in sympathy and 
companionship to one whom God had taken, and now 
God is giving to her aching heart so sweet a consolation, 
so pure a comforter. 

" Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thank- 
less child ; " but it must have been like a gleam of sun- 
shine on those barren plains to have so true and so com- 
plete an evidence of unselfish and self-sacrificing love. 
The heart of the mother-in-law must have beat with a 
quickened throb, and all the instincts of tenderness and 
holy love been diverted from the sad remembrance of 
the three graves over which she was still weeping. 

But while Naomi, as a mother, is gladdened by the love 
of her son's wife there was another fact apparent that 
was worth more to her than this. Ruth had not only 
pledged herself to be with her but to worship her God, 
and all of holy joy that she could know arising from the 
salvation of a soul now came upon her. She felt that her 
reward of faithfulness was given her. God had not only 
bestowed on her a daughter for her loneliness, but given 
her a star for her crown. In life and death they were to 
be together, and in eternity to be unseparated. This 
portion of Ruth's pleading gives us insight into the char- 
acter of Naomi ; she had not merely won the personal 
attachment and respect of her daughters-in-law, but her 
life and character had convinced them that the Lord 
whom she worshiped was the true God. She had lived 
away from the sympathies of God's chosen people, with 
no privileges of associated worship; had been away for 



A Woman's Influence. 173 

years, it may be, from the offered sacrifice ; had not in all 
that time heard either the voice of the priest or the 
chant of the multitude ; had been surrounded by those 
who worshiped idols and derided Jehovah; had received 
her son's brides, in all their loveliness and beauty, by 
some heathen rites. She had been beset by tempta- 
tions to conciliate those with whom she dwelt by adopt- 
ing their customs and honoring their gods. She had 
had no one to help her — husband sick, dying, dead ; 
sons, one by one, removed and buried, poverty and 
famine adding their rigors to her fate, already hard, 
and nothing to oppose to all these adverse influences 
but a bereaved and almost broken heart. Yet in all this 
her steadfastness failed not. If perchance her soul was 
among lions, yet she had not forgotten Jerusalem, 
"her chief joy ; " she had not lost her faith in Israel's 
God, nor her hope in the God of her fathers. By the 
purity of her life, by her living example of holiness, she 
had won a soul from death and was on her way to Beth- 
lehem, bearing with her a spirit newly born into the king- 
dom of heaven. She was a widow, but her trust was in 
Jehovah, and he had not forsaken her, but had sent the 
angel who journeyed by her side. The woman had her 
companion for life, the saint a companion for eternity. 

" The mother, in her office, holds the key of the soul ; 
and she it is who stamps the coin of character, and makes 
the being, who would be a savage but for her gentle 
cares, a Christian (man). Then crown her Queen o' the 
World."— Oldplay. 

In these touching circumstances we have examples 
which should be influential and controlling; there are 
lessons for us in this glimpse of former times ; we may 
turn to-day from the events of the closing years of the 



1 74 Pulpit and Platform. 

nineteenth century after Christ, and learn from the mid- 
dle of the twelfth century which preceded his coming. 

In all the more than three thousand intervening years 
since Naomi and Ruth journeyed together, there has 
been no true direction for life's journeying that has 
not tended toward Bethlehem. Mothers and daughters 
ever since when going on toward God have had it always 
before them. To Naomi it was chiefly as a residence 
among her kindred, for David had not yet dignified it 
as his home ; angels had not as yet startled watching 
shepherds on its fields ; its inns had not refused admis- 
sion to Joseph, nor had Mary cradled her babe in its 
mangers. While to us all these events are known ; and 
we have learned to look upon it as the birthplace of the 
world's Redeemer, and to turn toward it, and what its 
associations teach us, for the help we need in all our 
sorrows and the counsel we desire in all our efforts to 
do right. 

Mothers may ask themselves whether they have 
started toward Bethlehem. If they would have their 
daughters to be like Ruth they must lead them as Naomi 
did, and in the same direction. They must determine 
whether they desire their daughters to be worshipers 
there, or whether they desire for them place, titles, hon- 
ors, in a land like that of Moab, full of strange gods. 
Many desire wealth, beauty, fashion, accomplishments, 
rather than religious consecration. Unfortunately, of 
too many mothers it may truthfully be said that they 
themselves are not journeying in that direction. They 
have no home in Zion, no fellowship among God's peo- 
ple. How impotent and uninfluential would have been 
the voice of Naomi had she stayed in Moab and only 
counseled Ruth, or even urged her to go toward Beth- 



A Woman's Influence. 175 

lehem ! And yet many, far too many, who are blessed 
with the responsibilities of maternity are pursuing such 
a course. They desire their daughters to be Christians; 
they themselves may be nominally such, but they have 
no earnest consecration of holy living ; they feel sad 
sometimes to think that their entreaties are so fruitless, 
their advice so little heeded, forgetting that their voice 
is, after all, a voice from Moab, a voice that comes from 
one who contradicts in every utterance the real desire 
of the heart, as set forth in the daily life. How abso- 
lutely important it is that mothers who would have a 
religious influence upon their families should be them- 
selves dedicated to God. For from mothers come the 
first and the molding lessons to infancy, lessons to 
which even the babe answers by a kindling eye and a 
dimpling cheek. God has intrusted a cherub to her 
care. What if she soil its purity ? what if she mar all its 
long, eternal future? what if she defeat God's plans? And 
yet how can she avoid doing so if she be immersed in 
worldly cares and anxieties and pleasures? How can 
one teach a lesson one has never learned ? How can 
one who does not know the way be a safe guide toward 
Bethlehem ? A mother's silent, patient, Christian life has 
more of power and influence than the eloquence of a 
hundred pulpits, is more potent for good than all the 
teeming libraries of the world. If she would have her 
child, especially the child of her own sex, a Christian, 
she will succeed best not merely by admonition and en- 
treaty, even when these are accompanied by prayer, but 
by the silent rhetoric of a holy life. There is a sancttty 
about even the performance of domestic duties, the most 
ordinary household affairs, by such a one, that makes 
them honorable ; and the exhibition of Christian virtue 



i7 6 Pulpit and Platform. 

in the home circle has a charm that never fails of its con- 
trolling power. A mother who, like Naomi, lives con- 
sistently before her children, will have them for life 
companions ; in her age she may be tended by those who 
in infancy nestled in her bosom, and when they close her 
eyes in death they will ever feel that a pure, right-think- 
ing mother was to them God's best gift, and that " she 
waits for them at heaven's gate to lead them on." 

Mothers who desire the religious welfare of their 
children not only live consistently before them but 
honor God with them. Could Ruth, think you, have 
affirmed her faith in Naomi's God had she not heard 
Naomi pray and seen her at her worship? Doubtless 
that true woman had besought God in the presence of 
her daughters as well as in their behalf. The deep sor- 
row which made her wish to be remembered as " Bara " 
(the troubled, afflicted one) must have driven her for re- 
lief and refuge to a God that " answers prayer ; " and her 
children must have known this, must have heard the 
deep cry for succor pressed from her heart as it was 
poured out in her secret chamber and came stealing out 
from the apartment where she was alone with God. So, 
when they found her calm and trustful when Elimelech, 
the stay of her life and the companion of her joys, was 
taken, they may have wondered ; but when, one after 
another, their husbands were called away, and they may 
have gone to her for sympathy in the dull anguish of 
their bleeding hearts, they found that she was anchored 
on a rock which was higher than they. Together in 
suffering, they may have been together in their prayers. 
So should it always be : children should know that they 
have praying parents ; parents should allow their chil- 
dren to know that provision is made not only for food, 



A Woman's Influence. 177 

raiment, and the other necessaries of this life, but for the 
soul and its vaster interests ; and yet how many, even 
of professedly Christian mothers, spend more days with 
their children each year in consultation about " what 
they shall eat and drink, and wherewithal they shall be 
clothed," than they do hours in a whole lifetime in prayer 
with them ! For influence there must be not only per- 
sonal consecration but associated devotion. Together 
should they worship God both at home and in the sanc- 
tuary. Children associate the idea of home with the idea 
of worship ; the house of prayer, the forms of worship, 
the minister of God — all these become knit together with 
the love of parents, and linger in the memory long after 
the white marble in the cemetery has begun to gather 
moss upon its surface. John Pierpont wrote of his 
mother : 

" She led me first to God, 
Her words and prayers were my young spirit's dew ; 

For when she used to leave 

The fireside every eve, 
I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew. 

How often has the thought 

Of my mourned mother brought 
Peace to my troubled spirit, and new power 

The tempter to repel ! 

Mother, thou knowest well 
That thou hath blessed me since my natal hour." 

Parents will find themselves powerless to influence their 
children to adopt and continue the religious forms and 
customs in which they have been born and reared if 
they do not lead the children to feel that reverence for 
such duties as comes from participation in them. If 
Naomi had not in her home converse honored the idea 
of the tabernacle of God, had not reverently talked of 
God's priests, had not shown her own personal venera- 
12 



178 Pulpit and Platform. 

tion for them, Ruth never could have said, "Thy people 
shall be my people, and thy God my God." And, in our 
own day, if parents do not associate their children with 
them in their worship they ought to feel no surprise if 
other forms are sought and other worship substituted, 
when the child passes from parental restraint, to adopt a 
faith and creed on his own judgment. 

In order to this service must not be made irksome ; it 
should not be so, and the parent, if right and true, will 
cause it not to be so. No loving child will feel it to be 
a tedious thing to engage in acts of devotion in a church 
always attended by a fond parent, or to listen to the min- 
istry of one always spoken of as revered by its mother. 
How can a child feel otherwise than reluctant to attend 
a service that is made the subject of unloving criticism, 
or thought not to be grand or fashionable enough, or 
join in songs of praise, where less is said and thought 
of the devotion than of the merit or demerit of the per- 
formers and the performance ? What veneration can a 
child have for a church when a parent continually com- 
plains of having to give to it so much, or else which is 
depreciated by giving nothing, or equally by giving the 
smallest coins, some even selecting pennies, because they 
are worth so little and sound so big? On the other 
hand, how dear is the sanctuary where a loving parent 
prayed and gave the Lord his due ! how dear the holy 
book from which a mother read the word of life ! 

" Tears will unbidden start ; 
With trembling lips and throbbing brow 
We press it to the heart." 

Christian mothers should especially be careful lest 
they sow dissent in youthful minds ; once rooted in the 
heart it is not easily removed, and it is almost sure to 



A Woman's Influence. 179 

prevent a union in the journey toward Bethlehem. They 
must have pure examples, association in worship, prayer 
with as well as for them. These cannot fail of good re- 
sults and answers. 

" O, when a mother meets on high 

The babe she lost in infancy, 

Hath she not then, for pains and fears, 

The day of woe, the watchful night, 
For all her sorrows, all her tears, 

An overpayment of delight ? " — Southey. 

Many children of Christian parents dwell in the land 
of Moab among idolaters ; nay, are themselves idolaters, 
constant attendants upon Vanity Fairs, sent out by their 
parents to destruction, instead of being led by them to 
God. They are made to pass through the fire to Moloch, 
and some think that duty is performed by praying that the 
fire may not harm them. They are decked out with pride 
and given to the world, surrounded with temptations, 
and expected to be protected and delivered from evil 
by a prayer offered by the one exposing them. They 
will not journey toward God nor be safe anywhere 
unless you lead and guide and pray for and with them. 

There are lessons for the daughters of Christian moth- 
ers. I turn to you to give a word of solemn counsel and 
affectionate entreaty. You may have thought that what 
has already been said refers to others rather than to you, 
and concerns duties which possibly may be yours, but 
at some distant date. However this may be, I have not 
designed it, and believe that many a word I have spoken 
may yet bear fruit in you. But does the simplicity and 
beauty and power exhibited in the character of Ruth 
charm and attract you? Remember it derives its entire 
force and loveliness from the hierh consecration which 



180 Pulpit and Platform. 

enabled her to choose the God who had been her moth- 
er's God. Born amid idolatry, surrounded with the 
temptations and allurements of a heathen home, she sees 
the exaltation of a devout life and is drawn in love to- 
ward the character that displays it, and is thus led to 
make a most noble consecration. Natural affection may 
have prompted her, as it did Orpah, to accompany the 
widow on her journey; but when bidden to go back, 
though Orpah obeyed she loved Naomi all the more. 
She could understand the heart of the true woman who 
would not expose her to the trial of a strange land amid 
poverty and tears, and could measure the strength of char- 
acter which would thus cut off the only natural stay and 
hope still left to her ; but she did not falter, and even the 
example of her sister-in-law did not move her high pur- 
pose. Here was something more than womanly affection 
— this Orpah had ; here was a deep religious conviction 
and resolve that afterward found expression in her vow of 
consecration, " Thy God shall be my God." Orpahs may 
follow loving parents through this life, cling to them with 
declarations of attachment and protests of affection, and 
yet depart from them when duty calls for sacrifice. 
Ruths only go with parents to God. Nothing but the 
same deep feeling of devout reverence for God can give 
you hope of eternal companionship with the blessed. 
Tenderly have mothers reared and watched and prayed 
for you, made your lives happy, often at great personal 
sacrifice, and your homes have been your greatest bless- 
ing. 

" Number thy lamps of love, and tell me now 
How many canst thou relight at the stars, 
And blush not at their burning? One, one only, 
Lit while your pulses by one heart kept time, 
And fed with faithful fondness to your grave \ 



A Woman's Influence. 181 

Who sometimes with a hand stretched back from heaven, 

Steadfast through all things, near when most forgot, 

And, with a finger of unerring truth, 

Pointing the lost way in thy darkest hour — 

One lamp, thy mother's love, amid the stars 

Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before 

The throne of God burn through eternity, 

Holy as it was lit and lent thee here." — N. P. Willis. 

Can it be that all this is to be repaid by a mere begin- 
ning of the long journey to make the end more sad by 
desertion and loneliness ? Let it not be so. All happi- 
ness in earth and heaven depends upon assimilated char- 
acter; if you have not the same God, the same Saviour, 
you cannot have the same heaven, the same atmosphere 
of God. All earthly hope must sometime expire, all 
scenes of joy grow sad, all mere earthly pomp and show 
be dimmed, and then amid the wreck of the idolatries 
you will feel that it is no small suffering to lose forever a 
mother's care and love. In nature's order the mothers 
now so gentle and so full of care, so active in everything 
of interest and happiness for you, will be removed ; they 
must fade, the light of the loving eye must one day 
cease to kindle and the loving heart to beat ; and it is sad 
to think that you must lose them even for an hour; but 
to part and to remain parted forever, that is to everyone 
a torture. And to think that instead of going on to 
Bethlehem you are to be left in Moab, never amid its 
revelry to catch a glimpse of the loved form, never amid 
its mirth to hear the loved voice ; but sick and sad, 
weary and lone, with dying tapers and the fragments 
of the feast, to pass away into the joyless future — ■ 
that, indeed, is desolation to which we can only add the 
thought of that blessed spirit, white robed and crowned, 
pressing her way to heaven's closing gate and peering 



182 Pulpit and Platform. 

so anxiously from out its portals, yearning even then for 
your salvation, only to see you in the shadow of despair, 
passing out with faded wreath and disordered robes into 
the darkness. This ought to be sad enough to waken 
thought before it is too late. 

It may be that I speak to some who have already 
known such grief as comes only when we are left alone 
by the removal of our mothers. Their last prayers were 
for you. Have you permitted God to answer them ? Or 
have you by frivolous gayety averted his answering? 
God pity you if you have neither God nor mother. O, 
worse than orphan, turn toward the heaven your God 
has fitted, the heaven where your mother dwells ! Make 
her Saviour your Saviour, her God your God. 

There are, however, others who, like Ruth, have 
chosen wisely and well and cleave to him in whom their 
mothers trusted. How happy and how blest are these 
journeying together ! Their lives are peaceful and full of 
joy, companions in fidelity; they go hand in hand to 
Bethlehem and worship Bethlehem's King. They sing 
together of God's love, and shall stand together "on the 
sea of glass mingled with fire," and their harps shall 
have a sweeter sound because they are tuned in unison. 

Mothers, be as Naomi to your daughters; daughters, 
be as Ruths unto your mothers. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The success of the American Revolution and the defeat 
of the slaveholders' rebellion are the two events in our 
history important above all others. Each of them marks 
an epoch, rounds a period, and each of these epochs 
has its representative in a great leader. Mount Vernon 
holds the ashes of the one ; Springfield, 111., the form of 
the other. To George Washington we have been accus- 
tomed to do homage through all the lifetime of even the 
oldest man among us. We pay our tribute to Abraham 
Lincoln, his only peer. 

Singularly fortunate have we been in having for our 
chosen leaders in times of crises, both of birth and des- 
tiny, such men as Washington and Lincoln. Widely 
separated as they were in circumstances and natural en- 
dowments, they are indissolubly joined in the thoughts, 
hopes, and aspirations of the people, as father and pre- 
server of our liberties. 

It may even now be too soon to form a just estimate 
of Lincoln's worth to the world ; his real place in history 
may not yet appear. But after the lapse of a quarter of 
a century it still seems to me that fulsome panegyric and 
labored adulation would be unseemly, while indiscrimi- 
nate praise would be impertinence, since he was the em- 
bodiment of great practical common sense. 

Treasuring this idea as the key to the interpretation 
of his character, let us look at some of the endowments 
of the great man whom all men have learned to speak of 



184 Pulpit and Platform. 

as " the good President." The chief excellence of his 
intellectual power lay in its available activity. His intel- 
lect was strong, acute, penetrating; but while I admit 
with a just critic that he was "strong without greatness, 
acute without brilliancy, penetrating but not profound," 
yet I believe " he was in intellect more than an average 
American in the walk of life in which the nation found 
him." These endowments of strength, acuteness, and 
penetration he used from boyhood with devoted assidu- 
ity, and it was in their constant use, rather than by their 
superior quality, that he achieved distinction. Gifted 
with but few opportunities of education, as that term 
is too often used, he was yet educated in the highest 
sense, by reason of the compelled development of his 
own powers. Truth thus acquired is embodied and be- 
comes not so much a treasure of memory as an integral 
part of character and experience ; in its working it does 
not have to be referred to or recollected, but reproduces 
itself when needed, because it has entered into the fiber 
of character. Situated as Mr. Lincoln was in childhood, 
everything had a practical bearing. What he acquired 
was not laid by as a whetstone to sharpen his weapon on 
occasions, but was welded into his body and gave it 
temper and strength. His constant aim was to get at 
the essence of things, and so in after life he but seldom 
used technical phrases, but a form of speech the common 
people knew. As a lawyer educated by this habit, he 
could make his case as intelligible to the farmer or me- 
chanic who employed him as to the judge before whom 
the case was brought. He was habituated to translating 
hidden meanings and abstract formulas into the language 
of everyday life, and hence his state papers, while they 
seemed to some to lack dignity and stateliness, were 



Abraham Lincoln. 185 

always understood by the people. In his personal inter- 
course he assumed no superiority, but talked to men 
with a familiarity of illustration as one of themselves, 
and as one who trusted in the common sense of the 
people to understand him ; but he went with thorough- 
ness through the investigation of a problem in law or in 
statesmanship, got at the ultimate principle involved, 
saw its practical bearings and issues, and gave the result 
to the world regardless of the process by which he had 
acquired it. He was not careful to the side issues he 
had eliminated in his progress, believing that the world 
and the people wanted principles, not processes; truth, 
not tracts to it ; the end he had reached, not the way by 
which he got there. There is thus a plain practicalness in 
all he said that was not always appreciated, because the 
machinery of its accomplishing was all unseen. A build- 
ing always looks larger while the scaffolding is still 
around it, but Mr. Lincoln seldom showed his scaffolds 
or the ladders by which he mounted them. He gave 
strong and unmistakable proof of all care and circum- 
spectness by the thoroughness and availability of his re- 
sults for practice. 

He was probably the best exponent of the distinc- 
tively American mind — a man who in his own person 
was the consummate realization of the practical working 
in harmonious measure of the ideal and the practical, a 
man with the soul of a poet and the brain of a philoso- 
pher, whose pulse quickened to a generous throb at 
every noble thought and deed, but who grasped hard 
and difficult details with a strength which uncoiled their 
intricacies and made them practical. He was a man in 
whom the elements were mingled with such skill that he 
seemed to his associates at once the most exalted and 



1 86 Pulpit and Platform. 

the humblest, the noblest and the commonest of men. 
The most cultivated found in him an intuition which 
overtopped their learning, and the rudest found a man 
who entered into sympathy with every practical wrong. 
His speech the people knew; they never misunderstood 
nor misconceived him ; he was to them, in all the struggle, 
the embodiment of their earnest hopes and most confi- 
dent expectations. 

It would not be fitting here to tell of the difficulties he 
encountered in preparing for the bar, of his admission to 
it, of his irresistible attractions to public life, of his term 
of four years' service in Congress, where he took his place 
by the side of the rising statesmen of America, of his 
successful struggle with poverty and triumphant attain- 
ment of acknowledged eminence at the bar and in the 
forum. 

It is the glory of most great men to excel in some one 
department to which they lend all their faculties, and 
this very excellence may disqualify them for any other 
sphere of labor. It is rare to find an exhibition of pro- 
fundity and comprehensiveness of depth and clearness 
of skill in all the minutiae of jurisprudence and the wide- 
reaching qualifications of statesmanship. Mr. Lincoln, 
however, could command the attention of a courtroom, 
meet and cope with mysteries of evidence, and lay bare 
the thread of events from the tangled and conflicting 
statements of interested parties ; and he could also grasp 
the depths of constitutions, investigate and make plain 
questions of national policy, could rise above the conten- 
tion of party and the factions of politicians, could deal 
with foreign powers without chicanery and without hy- 
pocrisy, on the broad principles of equity and justice. 
The secret of his success was skillful moderation, inflex- 



Abraham Lincoln. 187 

ible ability, honorable forbearance, and courageous ad- 
herence to right. His whole course from the time he 
entered public life was that of a sound, strong, practical 
man, who never lost temper, never gave way to fretful 
querulousness, never tampered with principles ; and this 
gave him prestige, not only among his countrymen, but 
throughout the whole world. 

Thinking men who think practically are the greatest 
benefactors of their race. Even when not prominent on 
the great stage of the world's tumultuous life they exer- 
cise the most potent and salutary influence over its mul- 
tiform and complicated movements. A nation's industry 
and wealth, civilization and morality, are generated and 
nurtured, strengthened and sustained, by the thoughts 
of such men. The most advanced empire on the face of 
the globe would soon fall back to primitive barbarism 
were it not for the constant ministry of thoughtful souls. 
But whilst the enlightened and reflective are ever 
amongst the most useful, it is preeminently so when 
such men occupy the highest positions. Their ideas, 
like the springs from the mountain summit, roll rapidly 
down and swell in volume as they descend to give their 
character and their impulse to the lowest current that 
flows at its base. 

This was preeminently the case with our illustrious 
President. He occupied a position which invested his 
thoughts with the most commanding and world-wide 
influence. They are printed in books, circulated in news- 
papers, recorded in debates, flashed by electric current ; 
they are distilled as the dew on the heart of the peo- 
ple, or sounded like the trumpet of battle in the ears 
of the nation. His hand was on the spring of our na- 
tional machinery, on the helm of our national bark. 



1 88 Pulpit and Platform. 

The mental experiences, moral perceptions, and obser- 
vations of men are so diverse that one man may see 
more truth than all the rest. And his perception of it 
will depend not only on the height but also on the 
quality of his eye. The vulture may soar above the 
eagle, but the eagle's eye beholds what vultures never 
see. 

The position of Mr. Lincoln would not have given him 
the broad weight he possessed if he had not possessed 
his own peculiar gifts. In a few changes of our national 
administration we have been made to feel that "pygmies 
are pygmies still, though perched on Alps." In the 
influence of Mr. Lincoln we have seen a great man in 
a great place. Before his elevation men ridiculed and 
sneered. His appearance was as one of the people, his 
utterance was of common thoughts in common words, 
and men said of him, " He is a common man." And it 
was a noticeable excellence in Mr. Lincoln that he grew 
in power as he was advanced in position, until, in the 
language of a foreign critic, " In his last short message 
we find a grasp of principle, a dignity of manner, and a 
solemnity of purpose which would have been worthy of 
either Hampden or Cromwell." 

But Mr. Lincoln was not only a man of practical na- 
ture, but of a tender spirit as well. Sensibility of heart 
gives life, warmth, delicacy, to the power of intellect. 
Where these are not in their due proportion the character 
is defective ; where sensibility is stronger than the intel- 
lect the man is apt to become a morbid pietist or a reck- 
less fanatic ; where the intellect is stronger in proportion 
to the sensibility the man is likely to become a cold 
theorist, living in the frigid abstractions of his own brain ; 
but where both are properly combined you have a man 



Abraham Lincoln. 189 

fit for great things — a man who, if he be a friend, will 
give counsels that will tell alike on your understanding 
and your heart. 

In Mr. Lincoln this requisite sensibility seems to have 
been possessed in a degree well suited to the peculiar 
office which was assigned him, namely, the duty of unit- 
ing discordant elements and combining them against a 
monster evil. It developed that affability which made 
all feel at ease in his presence. It made him approach- 
able by all classes, and it caused him to manifest a zeal 
which seemed a personal interest in the affairs of the 
humblest who went to him with their wants and their 
petitions. There was no assumed dignity about him at 
any time, and hence no unbending of dignity by which 
those in his presence felt that he had come down from 
his state to make them welcome ; but there was that 
everyday and common interest displayed which made 
men feel that he was one among them. Probably no 
man who has ever filled the presidential chair could have 
gone to Fortress Monroe to meet the self-constituted 
commissioners without awakening public apprehension 
and anxiety for our cause and his safety. Yet he could 
go, and men said it was like him, and therefore seemed 
to think it was right. 

His honest bearing and kindly look would tell the ob- 
server that the motive which swayed him was the " royal 
law of love." We are not called to inquire what might 
have been the issue of so strong a tenderness in the set- 
tling up of the vexed questions of a reconstructive policy. 
The only fear that men entertained with regard to him 
and to his public policy was lest in the magnanimity of 
his nature he might fail to draw the line between his 
personal enemies and the foes of the republic, His per- 



190 Pulpit and Platform. 

sonal foes he would be sure to pardon ; might he not in 
so doing condone offenses against freedom. And what 
a concession of his grandeur there is in the admission of 
such a fear, that a man who had called into being the 
greatest armies known in history, who had lifted a nation 
out of a life of policy into a struggle for principle, should 
be of such a tender spirit as to look pitifully upon the 
nation's foes ! But our good President, having done 
wisely, lovingly, and well what was appointed to him to 
do, slept his last sleep, enshrined in the affections of a 
people before whom he exhibited all the domestic as 
well as patriotic virtues; and the people loved him be- 
cause he loved his country and his race. His genial 
philanthropy led him early in life to look upon an en- 
slaved race with sympathy, and to move himself for their 
relief; his intellect detected the practical fallacy of own- 
ing men whom we declared free, and subordinating men 
whom we declared equal, of denying to them rights 
which we proclaimed inalienable ; and long before the 
nation was fully roused to a sense of its inconsistency he 
had declared the impossibility of a government existing 
part slave and part free. The "iron mixed with clay" 
in the feet of the image he felt would endanger the sta- 
bility of the whole structure, and so he was found on the 
side of freedom, sympathizing with the oppressed ; and 
the enslaved felt that he was their true friend. 

The consolidation of our government found slavery an 
existing institution, and without formally recognizing 
it by title the Constitution was interpreted so as to cover 
its results. Our fathers made no aggression upon its 
territory, no assault upon its facts. Had they made no 
concessions for its protection slavery might have ulti- 
mately died out. But concessions had been made. Slavery 



Abraham Lincoln. 191 

had increased both in its proportions and in its demands; 
not content with the position assigned it by the founders 
of the republic as an existing but temporary evil, it 
claimed to be permanent as well as existent, a good in- 
stead of an evil. 

It had been grasping and malignant, but it became 
rebellious and defiant. It had been in all the past an 
occasion of dispute and compromises. It had been false 
to its own professions, and greedy of empire. Unequal 
in its pace with the giant strides of freedom, it had laid 
difficulties in the way and beset the path with dangers. 
Foiled in its attempt to hinder or defeat the more rapid 
growth of States from which it was excluded, it was to 
erect a new dominion and proclaim a new evangel. It 
had so eaten out the strength of its foes that there was 
danger of its success ; men felt that it must be crushed 
or the nation must perish; it must be banished forever 
or the hope of humanity itself would be destroyed. 

It is difficult to estimate the embarrassments by which 
Lincoln was hedged about when the boldness and pre- 
cipitancy of the South forced war upon him. With sym- 
pathies all aroused in behalf of freedom, he was bound 
by forms, by compacts, and by stipulations, and more 
firmly still by the unawakened sense of the people. 
Slavery had been a power, and though men felt that it 
had been an evil, yet many felt an awe of it and were 
timid. But when the issue was squarely made the blow 
was struck and the manacles fell from the limbs of four 
millions of slaves. It seemed like an inspiration to be- 
holders, but it was the result of a long series of progress- 
ive movements that must move slowly in order that their 
results might be made sure. It was a work almost more 
than human, for the black man crouched upon the earth 



192 Pulpit and Platform. 

of whose dust he had been formed, and Abraham Lin- 
coln breathed upon him the breath of liberty, and the 
slave arose a free man with a living soul. 

A thousand hands, from whom he had broken the fet- 
ters, were lifted in sorrow and in prayerful but heart- 
broken grief when he died ; they mourned him because, 
as they said, " other men might befriend them from 
policy, but this man from principle and from sympathy." 

No man could do such an act without having great 
faith in God and confidence in humanity; and these are 
the strong points of his character. His confidence in 
God arose from an intelligent perception of God's power 
exhibited in the " logic of events ; " he believed an un- 
seen hand was guiding, and his frequent remark, " It will 
all be right," showed that he watched for the end of an 
assured event. This confidence made him hopeful of 
issues when other men gave way to despondency and 
gloom. He does not seem to have faltered in his trust, 
or for a moment to have abandoned his hope. This ex- 
plains to us what the English critic meant when he spoke 
of his curiously strange habit of looking upon political 
forces as he would upon the great forces of the wind, and 
sailing with a certain prescience of what is coming, but 
without the slightest wish to hasten its arrival by a day, 
or any desire, indeed, except to stand aside and watch 
till the moment for inevitable action was forced upon 
him. He trusted that God would in some way purify 
the nation ; he firmly believed that God had planted and 
fostered this land for the final experiment of freedom ; 
he never gave room to the idea that he would permit 
men to destroy the best achievement of advancing civil- 
ization fostered under his protection. 

This gave a strange and peculiar beauty to his 



Abraham Lincoln. 193 

thoughts of our country's future. God gave him a po- 
etic soul, that he might anticipate the quickening pulse 
of his country's swelling heart and conceive the grandeur 
of its throbs, should none of its swelling arteries be sev- 
ered, none of its filling veins be opened. He loved the 
Union, and this love largely moved and fully filled all 
his conceptions of our future, so that even when the 
waters seemed in rage to be over the tops of the high 
mountains his faith in God failed not. In the darkest 
shadows of our nation's eclipse he calmly waited to see 
the disturbed system emerge from the darkness and 
move again, as before, unharmed amid the rival spheres; 
and he lived just long enough to be assured that his con- 
fidence was well founded. Equally strong and charac- 
teristic was his faith in humanity. Public opinion was 
to him the aggregate thought and conscience of the 
nation, and in this he had confidence. The people were 
right and he trusted them. To discover what the na- 
tional conscience expressed, and then to accomplish it, was 
his theory and practice of official duty. His life is best 
understood by those who consider him as the people's 
President, an officer who never said, " I will do thus and 
so because I have the power, being President," but who 
seemed rather to say, " The people whom I represent 
would have me do so ; therefore this is my policy." He 
never forgot the fundamental doctrine of the Constitu- 
tion, " We, the people, do ordain ; " and to represent 
them rather than himself was his constant endeavor. 
He gathered into his cabinet and about him every man 
who had been a candidate in popular favor for the office 
to which he had been chosen. There is not on record 
one single act of his proscribing, without a cause which 
the people approved, a political rival. He could accept 
13 



194 Pulpit and Platform. 

the resignation of his secretary of the treasury even 
when he knew it was offered to embarrass his adminis- 
tration, and at the same time resolve to promote the ex- 
secretary to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. He 
sent no man abroad to have him out of the way, but he 
surrounded himself with the people's thoughts as em- 
bodied in the men of the people, and from discordant 
elements worked out a harmonious and successful ad- 
ministration. He identified himself with the masses 
and was ready to move as they moved. When he en- 
tered office he executed the " Fugitive Slave Law," 
which he had denounced as wrong, because the people 
had enacted it ; he rescinded Fremont's proclamation, 
which he knew was right, because the people were not 
ready for it ; he retained McClellan in command, after his 
own patience seemed to be exhausted, because of the 
people's faith in him. He was the embodiment of the 
popular will, advancing, waiting, just as the aggregate 
thought and conscience of the people moved or rested, 
and herein he displayed what I think to be the most 
marked of all his individual traits, namely, his strong 
practical common sense. The nation has had presidents 
whose intellectual power was equal to his, whose culture 
was superior, but the nation has had no president who was 
so truly the people's representative, whom the people 
could so trust, as being inflexibly honest and unflinch- 
ingly true. 

Hence he was the most useful man of his age. No 
man of the nation but could have been better spared 
than he. Though he had done much, he was still only 
in the prime of manhood, and if his life had extended 
through a second term of office his influence for good, 
to all human appearance, would have been immense. 



Abraham Lincoln. 195 

But he died in the zenith of his life, in the enthusiasm 
of his hopes. Time had not stolen strength from his 
limb nor cooled the fires of his nature. Never was he so 
competent to help his country, never were his services 
apparently more required, and never was he more dis- 
posed to use his augmented power for the good of the 
nation. Just at that juncture of our history we seemed 
to require a man of his commanding integrity and cosmo- 
politan sympathies ; and yet this great and good man fell 
in the strength of his manhood, in the flush of his tri- 
umphs, and fell by the hand of a murderer! 

There was no man in the nation for whose safety or 
whose life larger interest could be manifested. The 
whole nation trembled when he went down to inspect the 
seat of power from which the enemy had fled! Guards 
and attendants pressed with willing feet to surround his 
person and protect his life. But the last hour of his ap- 
pointed time had tolled in the ear of destiny, and death, 
prompt to the moment, was there. He had entered the 
capital almost alone in order to escape assassination ; he 
left it in his coffin, the assassin's victim ; but a whole 
nation lined on either side the thousand miles over 
which the corpse was borne, and not one eye was tear- 
less, not one heart but mourned. The act of the assas- 
sin paralyzed the whole nation. Great statesmen wept, 
and men mighty in battle ; while the poor of the race 
he freed brought their humble tributes to the chieftain's 
coffin. A common sorrow filled the hearts of all classes 
in the community and caused them for a while to flow in 
one swelling wave of kindred grief. All souls were drawn 
together in the mystic affinities of woe ; all hearts were 
wedded in the unity of tears. 

Before these tears were dried a universal horror of the 



196 Pulpit and Platform. 

deed was breathed through the closed lips of suffering 
freemen, and maledictions fierce and loud were poured 
upon the head of him who had dared to lift his hand 
"against the Lord's anointed." The wrath of the peo- 
ple waxed hot, and a moral sentiment prevailed before 
which even foul-mouthed treason was dumb, and which 
caused even those who had encouraged and incited sen- 
timents which led to the act to hide themselves in the 
semblance of grief. Prominent promoters of the rebel- 
lion North and South hastened to purge themselves 
from complicity in the deed, and no man could have 
lived that day who had dared to applaud or to approve 
the deed. We were that day one people speaking one 
language. 

The momentary and stunning effect of the blow passed, 
and men saw with a clearness they had not known before 
that this crime was but the hellish outgrowth of the 
system which had inaugurated armed rebellion ; that to 
piracy and barbarism, torture, debauchery, and bloody 
sweat, assassination was but the fitting culmination ; and 
there was a shudder of anguish as we perceived that the 
blow of the assassin was given by the spirit of slavery. 
And then with what a thrill we recalled the words of his 
second inaugural, when he said: 

" Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if 
God wills that it continue till all the wealth piled by 
the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
toils shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the 
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether.' " 



Abraham Lincoln. 197 

Then justice and mercy appeared to be contending over 
our flag — justice staining our stripes, and mercy with 
tears from widows and orphans and loved ones bleaching 
them white. Blood had flowed from the tortured frames 
of toiling slaves, but justice was not yet satisfied. From 
all ranks of society blood had been drawn — atoning 
blood — but still the dye was not deep enough. Justice 
had sworn that the flag of freedom should represent our 
sufferings and our sins, so that men should never again 
fail to see in it our common emblem. The farms had 
given yeomen, the shops had given tradesmen, the man- 
ufactories laborers ; commerce had sent her seamen and 
her merchants. Professions had been vacated to pour 
out blood enough, as we thought, to cancel every wrong ; 
but justice was not satisfied until in the halls of the 
White House there was mourning, and the chief man 
of all was slain; and then, we trust, justice and mercy 
once more were clasped in a long embrace; the drawn 
sword was sheathed, and the tears of sorrow fell un- 
checked. And now the flag that floats over us is ours — 
yes, yours and mine ; for over every home which had 
given its victim, cheering each heart which had shed its 
tears, the red and white are joined upon the blue, from 
which the stars shine radiantly. 

Fellow-citizens, that flag is to float over freemen who 
have braved all for freedom ; it has in every fold protec- 
tion and in every star encouragement; and if ever there 
shall be found among us, North or South, men whose 
emotions antagonize its hues, who pale when they see its 
crimson folds, and blush as its white stripes float in the 
breeze, and who feel this because of sympathy with the 
spirit of slavery, or secession, or rebellion, or assassina- 
tion, or intimidation, they must stand from under its 



19S Pulpit and Platform. 

folds. They must seek homes where that flag does not 
wave. There must be hereafter no sickly and maudlin 
sympathy for treason nor for traitors. We must have 
" charity for all and malice toward none," but we must 
" have firmness to do the right as God gives us to see the 
right." And we must also remember that "mercy to 
the individual may be cruelty to the State." " Mercy 
has been slain ; let us not also destroy justice." 

Contemplating the character of Mr. Lincoln, of one 
thing we must be well assured — he has not ceased to be. 
No man can believe that his practical intellect, so expe- 
rienced, so enriched, and his noble heart, the fountain 
of such glowing sympathies, were extinguished ; that 
all that remains to us of our illustrious President was 
laid in his tomb, and that his great soul went out 
with his last breath, like a quenched star, to be rekin- 
dled no more. We cannot believe that after we have 
struggled on in life from penniless childhood, assidu- 
ously trained our faculties for usefulness, wrestled with 
difficulties and mastered them, striven for position and 
gained it, and fully equipped with power to help the 
world in the very zenith of life, we are to be crushed for- 
ever. It were better never to have lived at all than to 
have lived thus. We have better hope than this, for we 
have heard a voice from heaven saying: " Write, Blessed 
are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: 
Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; 
and their works do follow them." The acclamations of 
the thousands of our fellow-citizens who speak his 
praises, the growth and the development of the race that 
he freed and liberated fill the air about us; but these 
shall be lost somewhere and fade into the eternal silence. 
But the complete work that he accomplished in his life 



Abraham Lincoln. 199 

and the results which shall even yet come from his un- 
timely death shall never lose their power ; we shall 
greet them in " the beyond." There, where each great 
deed is as a star and each high, generous thought a 
crown, we may see the unfolding of the results of his 
brief, useful living, and be satisfied. 

But not only for the individual, but also for the nation, 
was there proof in his death of a continuous living. 
Others have died while occupying the station which he 
so nobly fills, but with one exception they died as other 
men ; the times were peaceful and they calmly sunk to 
rest. But this great man fell by the act of an assassin, 
in a time of civil discord and fraternal strife, when the 
cloud of battle was still lowering, though it was streaked 
with harbingers of peace. In any other land than ours 
his loss at such a time, by such an act, would have con- 
vulsed the nation and have clogged, almost inextricably, 
the wheels of government. But, though our land was 
startled and dismayed, the wheels of our government 
moved on, the affairs of the nation knew no check, and 
no man might guess, from any halting, that the hand of 
the executive* of the nation was chilled in death. There 
was even no interregnum, but the official mantle of the 
departed fell upon his successor, who at least began to 
draw the salary if he did not fill the place. 

I have sometimes doubted whether the loss of Lincoln 
was a severer trial to the nation than the succession of 
Johnson. But it tested our economy and polity, and the 
response to the strain was an indication which it requires 
no inspiration to interpret. The land shall live, the 
nation shall not die ! And in the words of a great ora- 
tor and statesman, " We shall live and not die ; the ill- 
omened sounds of fanaticism shall cease ; the ghostly 



200 Pulpit and Platform. 

specters of secession and disunion shall disappear, and 
the enemies of united constitutional liberty, if their ha- 
tred cannot be appeased, may prepare to have their eye- 
balls seared as they behold the steady flight of the 
American eagle, on burnished wing, for years and years 
to come." Yes, we shall live and not die ; the throes 
that rocked the nation's frame were not death struggles, 
but birth pangs destined to issue in a nobler future. 

The President, when he sank beneath the ball of the 
assassin, grasped in his left hand the flag of the Union. 
In this there was a lesson, an omen ; even in his death 
throes he clung to the flag. God gave it to us, striped 
with the dawn and gemmed with the stars. It is ours 
to unfold it and to maintain it. We should feel, each 
of us, the dignity and importance of our position in a 
land where the example of every man radiates farther 
than he himself can see or know, and each of us — be 
our position what his was when he commenced life, or 
nearer the honor he attained while living, or wherever 
our lot may be — be true to the principles he taught, 
true to the flag he loved. 

And when these sentiments of loyalty shall fill all 
hearts and actuate all lives, who, who shall cast the horo- 
scope of our country's greatness? The living tide of 
population shall swell and roll from the Atlantic over 
the mountains and across the broad prairies till it meets 
the waves of the broad Pacific ; but instead of the clangor 
of war and the gleaming of arms there shall rise to 
heaven the busy hum of industry and the waving rich- 
ness of plenty. The green earth shall no more be red- 
dened by the blood of the innocent and helpless, and the 
wild whirlpool of anarchy and rebellion no longer fling 
toward heaven its bloody and its hellish spray ; but the 



Abraham Lincoln. 201 

broad Alleghenies shall answer back to the snowy Cordil- 
leras in accents of peace and gladness ; while from the foam 
and thunder of Niagara to where the Father of Waters 
rolls his mighty tide beneath a tropical sun, from every 
templed hill and every teeming valley, there shall rise the 
grateful hymn of millions of free and faithful hearts. 

If the individual and personal traits of Abraham Lincoln 
could become national characteristics; if honesty, integrity, 
devotion to right and faith in God can be national traits, 
we shall fill the promise of our great future, all free, all 
equal, all endowed with rights inalienable. The noblest 
tribute man can pay to Abraham Lincoln will be given 
in generous-hearted efforts to accomplish this national 
regeneration. Great men of other lands maybe commem- 
orated by a single shaft or statue, but the memory of the 
" People's Representative " only by such effort as shall 
include us all who live under a government " of the peo- 
ple, by the people, for the people," since 

"Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate; 
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 

Not starred and spangled courts 
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride — " 

these do not constitute a State ! 

" No : men, high-minded men, 

With powers so far above dull brutes endued 
In forest brake or den, 

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude, 
Men who their duties know, 

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, 
Prevent the long-aimed blow, 

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain — 
These constitute a State." 



PERSONAL MEMORIES OF U. S. GRANT. 

When the earth shall have received into its bosom 
the body of the illustrious dead, when dust shall be 
given to dust and ashes to ashes, then will be time 
for the eulogist, the orator, and the historian to recount 
his life, herald his exploits, and assign his place in his- 
tory. To-day, in the universal sadness which has be- 
fallen the nation, I propose to speak of him simply as I 
knew him, and to recall such traits of his personal charac- 
ter as the circumstances and the place may justify. 

The first time I ever saw General Grant was on a visit 
that he made to Chicago near the close of the war. I had 
been requested by the governor of the State to assist in 
raising funds for the purchase of a soldier's orphan home, 
and had informed the governor that with his and Gen- 
eral Grant's indorsement I believed the effort would be 
a success. I was impressed with the aptness of the ques- 
tions which General Grant put to me ; they were brief, 
methodical, and seemed to cover the whole ground. 

Appointing the next day for an interview, at the hour 
named I found him in a room full of friends and visitors. 
Recognizing me, he directed one of his aids to bring 
writing materials, and sat down in the midst of the con- 
fusion and wrote a commendation of the enterprise to 
the people of the State, who gladly responded. 

A trait of his character was developed when on a visit 
to Chicago at the time of the Sanitary Fair. He remained 
there over Sunday. Great interest was manifested in 



Personal Memories of U. S. Grant. 203 

knowing where he would worship on that day. Pews 
were offered for his use in almost all the principal 
churches, and carriages were proffered by their owners 
for his accommodation. On Saturday afternoon he 
sent one of his aids, Colonel Babcock, to inquire of a 
well-known Methodist lady whether a minister by the 
name of Vincent, who used to live in Galena, were not 
preaching somewhere in Chicago. He was informed 
that Mr. Vincent was pastor of Trinity Church, in the 
southern part of the city. Trinity Church was then a 
mere mission station, a recent offshoot from Clarke 
Street, and John H. Vincent had not attained his present 
conspicuous position. But on Sunday the general, with 
his staff, quietly entered a carriage and drove down, 
unannounced, to worship in the little church and listen 
to a sermon by the pastor whom he had heard in his 
former home. 

When I went to Washington to become pastor of the 
Metropolitan Church I found him one of the most regu- 
lar of the congregation in attendance upon public wor- 
ship. He seemed to be scrupulously careful on this 
matter, frequently explaining, when necessarily absent, 
the occasion of his non-attendance. His attention to the 
service was marked and unflagging, and the subjects of 
the sermons were frequently matters of subsequent con- 
versation. He never seemed conscious of the fact that 
the eyes of the great congregation were often fixed upon 
him, and always in passing out at the minister's private 
exit, to avoid the crowd, he spoke cheerily and appre- 
ciatingly to the clergyman. He enjoyed all of the re- 
ligious services of the church, excepting the singing, 
having a constitutional inability to appreciate music. 
He told me once that all music seemed to affect him as 



204 Pulpit and Platform. 

discord would a sensitive and skilled ear, and that he 
would go a mile out of his way rather than listen to the 
playing of a band. And when the hymn to be sung 
consisted of four stanzas he experienced a feeling of 
relief as each one was sung and so disposed of. 

Not long after my arrival in Washington, at a recep- 
tion given by ex-Postmaster General King, I was asked 
by his daughter whether it was true (as she had heard) 
that General Grant had never sworn a profane oath. I 
was surprised at the question and took opportunity to 
speak to the general about it, when he told me that he 
never had used profane language, and that he was quite 
sure if he ever had done so under any provocation he 
would have remembered it. 

On one occasion a friend, whom I wished him to hear, 
was to preach for me on a Sunday night. I called upon 
the President to inform him of this fact, and said that I 
had done so because I had observed that he attended 
service only once on Sunday, and thought that if he 
knew of this arrangement for the pulpit he might prefer 
to attend the evening service. He said to me : " I am 
glad of an opportunity to explain this matter to you. 
Secretary Fish and some others have an absurd notion 
that I ought not to walk about the streets of Washing- 
ton at night, and consequently I never get to the 
evening service, though I should be glad to do so." 
And seeing that I was surprised by this statement he 
said: " Perhaps you think that I might have the car- 
riage and ride to service ; but, doctor, when I was a 
poor man, long before I ever thought that I should 
have a servant, I made up my mind that if I ever 
did have one he should have his hours of Sunday 
for worship. No servants or horses are ever called 



Personal Memories oe U. S. Grant. 205 

into use by mc upon that day for my own personal 
convenience." 

I was a stranger to him when I assumed that pulpit, 
and his Methodist training and education are shown in 
an incident narrated to me by Bishop Ames. There is in 
Washington a Methodist church much nearer to the 
White House than the Metropolitan, and the official 
members of that church believed that it would be 
greatly to its interest if a minister who was well known 
to the general and much liked by him could be induced 
to become their pastor and the general induced to 
attend the service. And they waited upon him with a 
statement of their views, when General Grant simply 
remarked to the spokesman at the interview that he 
believed it was the Methodist custom to change pastors 
and not to change churches. 

Some months before his second inauguration he 
asked me if I expected to be at home on the Sunday 
preceding that ceremony. I informed him that I did, 
and asked him why he put the question. He said he 
thought it would be appropriate to invite the members 
of his cabinet to attend service with him on that day. 
Accordingly, they were invited and came. Chief Justice 
Chase, learning of this intention, invited the members 
of the Supreme Court ; and perhaps this is the only 
occasion in the history of the government that these 
chief officers, with other military and civil functionaries, 
have been present at a similar religious service. 

The home life in the White House during the Grants' 
residence was beautiful in its domestic simplicity and 
purity, and the influence of the family in society was 
markedly beneficial. In former times public receptions 
had been made the occasion of conviviality and excess, 



206 Pulpit and Platform. 

and the banishment of wine and spirits from the public 
receptions of the officers of the cabinet was requested 
by General Grant and promptly complied with. Due 
credit has never been given by temperance crusaders and 
politicians to the wholesome effect of this movement 
and the admirable example thus set before the American 
people. 

The tenderness and love of the general for his family 
were simple and unrestrained, without affectation, without 
ostentation. It was a sore trial to both parents to allow 
their daughter to leave their home ; but when, in com- 
pliance with the general's stipulation, Mr. Sartoris took 
the necessary steps to become an American citizen their 
consent was given. 

The marriage took place in the east room of the White 
House, and was conducted according to our Methodist 
forms, with simplicity and dignity; but the parting of the 
father from his only daughter seemed for a time to com- 
pletely unnerve him. I found him in the evening of that 
day sad and depressed and lonely. His treasure had 
gone and was to be parted from him by the seas; for a 
death had occurred in the Sartoris family which made it 
necessary that Mr. Sartoris should return to his English 
home. The life of that daughter was to him an inspira- 
tion. He longed for her presence and wistfully counted 
the hours of their necessary separation, and rejoiced at 
the promised speed of the vessels which would bring her 
to him. Her face was fittingly the last upon which his 
conscious gaze rested, and the love of the two has thus 
become immortal. 

He was tenacious in his friendships, and has been criti- 
cised for adhering to men when others had found reasons 
for withdrawing confidence. But he was of such personal 



Personal Memories of U. S. Grant. 207 

integrity and uprightness that he refused to believe it 
possible that other men were not influenced by his own 
high motives. Absolutely incapable of servility, he 
could not suspect other men of fawning sycophancy. The 
soul of honor and manliness himself, a man who was a 
stranger to indirection and falsehood, General Grant 
could not comprehend how men could be dishonorable 
and false by method. He believed all men honest ; con- 
sequently he was often the victim of designing men. In- 
genuous himself, he could not comprehend unscrupulous- 
ness. Attacked by public men and the press as a dishonest 
and corrupt man, he came to believe that honest men 
were surest to be abused. Consequently he stood by 
men who were under fire. 

He was silent under bitter accusation and calumny, 
and I remember well one evening at the White House, 
when my family were the only guests, that Vice President 
Colfax and his sister were introduced. In the course of 
conversation Mr. Colfax remarked : " During the cam- 
paign, general, I marveled at the quietness of your en- 
durance of wrong and misrepresentation. Now that I 
myself am passing under similar trials it seems to me 
that your endurance was almost more than human." The 
general quietly remarked : " Did you ever believe, Mr. 
Colfax, that I was insensible to it, and that it did not 
hurt?" 

He made no special religious profession, and yet he 
was a man of religious nature, and thoroughly earnest 
and honest in his belief in a superintending Providence, 
regarding certain facts in history as inexplicable without 
this, and admiring the firm faith of a devoted sister and 
reverencing with a sacredness that was beautiful in its 
exhibition the piety of his parents. 



2o8 Pulpit and Platform. 

He made a visit of a week to Martha's Vineyard, 
which was then my summer home. I preached a ser- 
mon on " The Victory of Faith," from the text, " They 
overcame him by the blood of the Lamb." He was more 
moved than I had ever seen him under a discourse, and 
at the close of the sermon, at his suggestion, we wan- 
dered away from the crowd and engaged in earnest and 
serious conversation. He said, " Why is there so much 
stress laid on the blood in your preaching and in the 
New Testament? " I explained to him in the simplest 
terms the doctrine of atonement, and he seemed fully to 
comprehend it. The giving up of life as a test of love 
was so incontrovertible an argument that it satisfied a 
man who had led thousands through death to victory, 
and I have always had a strong confidence that on that 
day the general had a personal realization of the truth 
as it is in Jesus. 

We have not heard as yet a statement of the spiritual 
history of these last months, but when it shall be dis- 
closed to us I doubt not it will reveal not only that a 
great man was calmly facing the end of his earthly 
career, but that a humble, trusting soul was in con- 
fident expectation of a heavenly life in union with its 
Saviour. The wonderful changes in his life, the brave 
work he did, the great honors thrust upon him, the vicis- 
situdes which came to him, all mark him as a hero — one 
of the great men not only of this nation and this century, 
but of the race ; displaying as many of the virtues and 
as few of the weaknesses of human nature as almost any 
other man of whom history makes mention. Magnani- 
mous in victories, patient under personal loss and suffer- 
ing, he compares more nearly with the first President 
than do any of his other successors in office. Linked in 



Personal Memories of U. S. Grant. 209 

the nation's history by the contingency of events with 
the author of the edict of emancipation, himself the 
power which gave that edict force and realization, he will 
take his place in the thoughts of men as the associate 
and peer of Washington and Lincoln. 

Singularly fortunate has the nation been in having for 
its chosen leaders in times of crisis, both of birth and 
destiny, such men as these. Widely separated as they 
were in circumstances and in natural endowment, they 
will be indissolubly joined in the thoughts, hopes, and 
aspirations of the people. 

Washington was a man of colossal character, the cul- 
mination and perfection of the Anglo-American type of 
the race. By blood an Englishman, by education an 
American, following the traditions of his birth he would 
have sided with the rule of authority ; inspired by the 
genius of liberty, he won the first laurels of the republic 
in the freshness of their early bloom. 

Lincoln was perhaps the best exponent of the distinc- 
tively American mind. In his own person he was the 
consummate realization of the working in harmonious 
measure of the ideal and the practical ; a man with the 
soul of a poet and the brain of a philosopher, whose 
pulse quickened to a generous throb at every noble 
thought and deed ; who grasped hard and practical de- 
tails with a strength that uncoiled their intricacies ; a 
man who seemed to combine in one character the most 
exalted and the humblest, the noblest and the common- 
est of men. 

As we had Washington to lead in laying our founda- 
tions, and Lincoln to guide in the realization of the in- 
stincts of freedom, so we have had Grant, the greatest 

general of his age, to superintend the consolidation of 
14 



210 Pulpit and Platform. 

the Union and direct in the maturing of its plans. A man 
whose characteristic was integrity, whose methods were 
dictated by that rarest of qualities which we call com- 
mon sense, there was no poetry in his nature and no elo- 
quence in his speech. He was a plain, blunt man that 
moved right on. Without oratorical embellishment his 
utterances were sententious, and the world will not soon 
forget the phrases: " Unconditional surrender," " I pro- 
pose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," 
" Let us have peace." 

He fought to victorious conclusion the war of the 
rebellion, and his magnanimity was recognized and has 
been applauded by those over whom his victories were 
gained. And he had that other and more difficult task 
— to preside over the destinies of a nation composed 
alike of the victors and the vanquished ; and he thus 
sustained the grandeur of two perfectly distinct yet 
equally exalted epochs in the history of a great nation, 
and has proved himself a hero, who, having gathered all 
the laurels in the field, was able to demonstrate to men 
that " peace hath her victories no less renowned than 
war." 

He never worshiped in this church building.* Before 
its erection, under the impulse of personal friendship he 
identified himself with another denomination, and only 
when troubles came to the church where he worshiped, 
and he seemed to be temporarily without a church home, 
did I invite him to attend our services and worship with 
us. I received from him the following letter, which 
seemed to me as I read it inexpressibly sad ; for I knew 
not then that the end was so near, and thought more of 
his business troubles than of his failing health: 

* Madison Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, New York city. 



Personal Memories of U. S. Grant. 211 

"New York City, Feb. 4, 1885. 

" My Dear Dr. Tiffany : Your letter of the 30th of 
January, kindly placing a pew in your church at the serv- 
ice of myself or any of my family, was duly received. 
While I thank you I cannot accept. My physical con- 
dition will not admit of my attending church or going 
any place where I cannot control the temperature and 
draughts of air, before warm weather in the spring. Where 
myself and family will be after that time I do not know. 
''Very truly yours, U. S. Grant." 

He rose from honorable obscurity to intelligent man- 
hood, and he gave the service for which he was qualified 
by the nation's education to the saving of the nation's 
life. He was exalted, applauded, honored : at home, 
filling the presidential chair two terms ; abroad, every- 
where welcomed, honored, and esteemed. The victim of 
outrageous villainy, with impaired health and vigor, he 
patiently endured disease and disaster, which resulted in 
death, devoting the closing months of his heroic life to 
the narration of his military career. At its completion 
he laid down his pen, as he had before sheathed his 
sword, and ascended Mount McGregor to ascend to God. 



AMERICAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS AFFECTED 
BY IMMIGRATION. 

Few topics are attracting more attention, few are of 
more vital interest, than that of foreign immigration. 
The statistics are swelling in their magnitude, but of 
unquestionable exactness. In 1820 there were in round 
numbers 8,000; in 1825, 10,000; in 1830,23,000; in 1835, 
45,000; in 1840 not quite 100,000; in 1845, 114,000. 
From that date the numbers have rapidly risen, with 
only an occasional lapse. In 1855 there were over 
200,000; in 1870, nearly 400,000; in 1872, over 400,000 ; 
in 1882 the maximum figure was reached, 788,000; and 
the total immigration from 1820 to 1887 amounts to 
over 13,000,000. 

The effect of pouring such a vast number of foreign 
people, with foreign ideas, customs, traditions, and lan- 
guages, into our land has been nearly as great on our- 
selves as it has been on them. They have largely 
modified our ideas, and, to some considerable extent, 
our institutions. Their influence has awakened the fears 
of some and the hopes of others. 

Our naturalization laws afford too easy access to citi- 
zenship, and here, in all probability, is the great occasion 
for future anxiety. But an inspection of facts and in- 
quiry into principles may help us to regard the question 
with calmness, if not to entirely dismiss our anxieties. 

In all the tribes of men there are those who, while 
distinctively of the tribe, exhibit marked resemblance to 



American National Character. 213 

men of other tribes ; some move rapidly, some slowly, 
both in bodily and mental exercise ; some yield slowly 
to impulses, others yield quickly. And there is no gen- 
eralization more recognized than that which exists be- 
tween men who easily perceive resemblances in things, 
and who are therefore apt to be impulsive and enthusi- 
astic, since they move rapidly up to conclusions, and men 
who rather perceive differences than resemblances, and 
are in consequence apt to be cautious and calculating, 
since they reach conclusions more slowly. The first 
furnish our theorists, discoverers, reformers, poets, and 
orators. The second furnish our mechanics, men of 
science, metaphysicians, and statesmen. 

The ancient Greeks were idealists. The world of 
mind was their peculiar sphere. They originated phi- 
losophy. They gave the world Plato and Aristotle, the 
typal representatives of the intuitional and logical forces. 
They explored almost every field of inquiry and filled 
the world with questions, spending much time in search 
of what was new. The Irish are the nearest akin to the 
ancient Greeks. In many respects they reproduce the 
quickness of mental processes, aptness of repartee, sub- 
tlety of maneuver, which characterized their ancient 
prototypes. Each nation, like the sea which washed 
its national shore, was easily lashed to a foam of excite- 
ment by a passing breath, and as soon subsided to a 
calm and placid surface. Each yielded to the pressure 
of outward influences, as the w r ave parts before the ad- 
vancing vessel and again closes in its wake, leaving no 
permanent trace of the displacement or struggle. A 
series of national calamities have depressed the condition 
of Ireland, but nothing has changed the Irish. An 
evicted tenant walks the hills or treads the bogs of his 



214 Pulpit and Platform. 

native land with the same feeling of pride that moved 
in the hearts of his ancestors. This was characteristic 
of the Greeks ; no matter what occurred, they were un- 
changed. The French people have shown their versa- 
tility in every change of their political history. There 
was a time when they developed three transcendental 
ideas, which are so plainly true that they carry their 
own evidence of Tightness with them. These ideas were 
liberty, equality, and fraternity. But they lacked sta- 
bility — interpreting fraternity with too wide a latitude; 
making equality, instead of the recognition of rights, the 
denial of superiority ; and writing liberty as unbridled 
license. 

The Romans, on the other hand, were from the first 
men of business and not of speculation. Every man 
spent ten years of the prime of his life in the army and 
the remainder in the study or management of public 
affairs; and this developed a nation of soldiers and 
statesmen. The Roman was the utilitarian of antiquity. 
His mission, he felt, was to conquer and govern the 
world. Everything which tended to promote this end 
he valued ; beyond this, things had for him only fanciful 
and fictitious worth. He despised that which he did 
not regard as practical. The Germans are phlegmatic 
and unexcitable, with more staying power than momen- 
tum. No race is more frugal, more patient, more hardy, 
or more easy to govern. They are noted for simplicity 
and integrity. Home and fatherland are with them 
subjects of supreme regard. 

In England the preponderance of the intensely practi- 
cal element is manifest in her conservatism. Whatever 
else we may think or say, of good or evil, concerning her, 
it cannot be denied that she has always been eminently 



American National Character. 215 

conservative — she has moved very slowly in the changes 
she has at different times been forced to make as con- 
cessions to the progress of popular thought. Content 
with her history, satisfied with things as they are, dread- 
ing change as an evil only to be tolerated because of 
some great advantage to be thereby gained, she has had 
the practical wisdom to let what she thinks well enough 
alone, and has thrust experiments and changes upon 
others, while she has maintained the bulwark of European 
freedom against all comers. She delights to-day in 
doing things as they were done in times gone by, and 
for no other reason than that they were then so done. 

When we come to consider the bent of our own na- 
tional character we must remember that we are the 
result of many combinations. Our original Anglo-Saxon 
ancestry itself separates into Puritan and Cavalier, and 
has had mingled with it many other nationalities. 

The census of 1880, if it could be taken as the ground 
of general comparison, shows the very remarkable fact 
that our resident foreign-born population of 6,679,943 
persons was distributed as follows : From the German 
empire, 1,966,742 ; from Ireland, 1,854,571 ; from France, 
106,971 ; from England, Scotland, and Wales, and Brit- 
ish America, 1,634,755 ; from all other sources, 1,1 16,904. 

This shows, if it be even an approximate standard, a 
fair admixture of the elements we have considered as 
controlling and distinctive, with a surplus of the prac- 
tical and conservative element. This is held by some 
of the profound thinkers of the world to be indicative 
of future greatness. Mr. Darwin, in his Descent of Man, 
says : " There is apparently much truth in the belief 
that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well 
as the character of the people, are the results of natural 



216 Pulpit and Platform. 

selection ; for the more energetic, restless, and courageous 
men from all parts of Europe have emigrated during the 
last ten or twelve generations to that great country, and 
have there succeeded best." 

The practical element which we derive from our Eng- 
lish ancestry was developed by the necessities of our life. 
The unexplored continent had to be subjugated and its 
resources developed ; forests must be felled, streams 
bridged ; the virgin soil must yield to the plow ; protec- 
tion from savages and beasts must be maintained ; the 
growing crops must be harvested and stored ; communi- 
cation must be established between the widely sepa- 
rated colonies and sustained with the homes which 
they had left. They must speed the plow, sow the seed, 
and gather in the harvest. Dragging from our mines 
that servant of all work — iron — they soon found black 
diamonds to blaze in our grates, and then the forge and 
the furnace began their blasts. Commerce was estab- 
lished by imports of necessities and exports of what we 
could best spare, and soon our ships were steered to 
every harbor and brought back in return the luxuries of 
every clime. Early driven by necessities to invent ma- 
chinery to economize both time and toil, they discovered 
new processes for facilitating production and augment- 
ing capital by new investments. One after another came 
steamboats, locomotives, cotton gins, reaping and sewing 
machines, rotary presses and telegraphs, proving how 
buoyant and manifold are the energies and activities of 
industry, until the shores of our distant oceans are now 
linked with bands of iron and a network of railways 
covers the whole land. 

As we have had much necessity, so we have displayed 
much genius for work. Labor has been rewarded ; la- 



American National Character. 217 

borers are paid, their rights respected ; their achieve- 
ments are our crown. Of course there has been friction in 
adjusting relations of labor to capital, but perhaps the 
reason why we have not experienced the dread scenes of 
communistic revolt lies in the fact that here the toilers 
of to-day are the capitalists of to-morrow. And so long 
as this respect for honest industry remains and the pos- 
sibilities of accumulation are so great this will continue 
to be our safeguard. Our workingmen have worked in- 
telligently. All possibilities have been opened to each 
one of them, and so they have wrought skill and taste 
into the products of the loom, strength and beauty in 
among coarser materials, and have put brain not into 
literature only, but mixed it in mortar, beaten it into iron, 
woven it into textile fabrics ; with it they have drained 
morasses, bridged rivers, tunneled mountains, and 
crowned the hills, until the desert blossoms and the hills 
are glad. 

But, besides the respect awarded to labor and the 
wealth accumulated by workingmen, the uses to which 
riches have been put demand attention ; and while in 
no other land have the practical forces of life been so 
carefully developed, by no nation has physical comfort 
been so well provided for and life been made so rich in 
beautiful embellishment and solid satisfaction. Mechan- 
ical powers have been utilized for the lessening of 
drudgery, the cheapening of necessities, and the rescue 
of time from the slavery of toil for the cultivation of 
the intellectual and moral faculties. A laboring man 
here lives more comfortably and maintains his family 
more reputably than many an employer abroad. We 
have accumulated wealth, and it has nowhere else been 
applied to more legitimate purposes. Here it is used for 



2i8 Pulpit and Platform. 

the diffusion of education to all classes and the estab- 
lishing of charitable institutions, in which the poor of 
other lands and the unfortunate of our own are gathered 
to be gladdened, cheered, and healed by sympathy, kind- 
ness, and care. But we are not a nation of mere utilita- 
rians, for while physical necessities demanded attention 
the stern realities of practical life have not hindered the 
growth of great principles and the development of en- 
larged thought and culture. 

The idealistic quality of our people was manifested even 
in the earliest days of the republic, in the debates which 
preceded the adoption of the Constitution. Then the 
most abstract truths found utterance, such as, " Men are 
born free and equal," " Governments derive power from 
the consent of the governed." These statements, which 
transcend reason, were the idealistic inspirations written 
down as the basis of American liberty. They were then 
entirely new to the world. And the discussion in which 
they were demonstrated and finally adopted is of ex- 
treme interest and importance. 

There was a division of sentiment among the people. 
Among the opponents of the Constitution was found a 
large proportion of the men who had fought the battle 
of independence. Hatred of Great Britain and the 
clamor of the opponents of the Constitution that the 
supporters of it were the friends of the mother country, 
and were in favor of a kingly form of government, car- 
ried over to the opposition nearly all the foreign popula- 
tion in the large towns and a very large portion of the 
unread and unthinking people of the rural districts. The 
weight of talent, wealth, and intelligence of the country 
was unquestionably for it; but had there not been a 
strong support from the tillers of the soil it is doubtful 



American National Character. 219 

whether, even with the aid of a moneyed interest, the 
document could have been adopted. Its antagonists 
were idealists, its supporters practical men, and to the 
planters of the slaveholding States and the commercial 
people of the seaport towns the country is indebted for 
the Constitution. So that the contest between idealism 
and conservatism resulted in the practical common sense 
of the Constitution. 

Singularly enough, the two great parties that divided 
the people of the country for years originated in the 
adoption of the Constitution. The party of opposition 
was led by Thomas Jefferson, who had resided in Paris 
during the formation of the plans for that document, and 
who, being flattered, wined, and dined by the leaders of 
the French Revolution, had partaken of their intoxica- 
tion. They were nearly all theorists, and he became 
impregnated with their wild and impracticable ideas. 
His followers in this country were all filled with foreign 
notions, and while many joined in with them they were 
essentially foreign. The Cavaliers in Virginia, with their 
caste notions and Established Church, joined him. They 
believed in State independence against national suprem- 
acy. Their ambition was to ingraft family aristocracies 
upon society as against the spirit of plebeian equality. 
They were to be the people, and to the people so con- 
stituted unlimited power was to be given. He was for 
a French republic, and, provided he and his could hold 
the power, all power was to be concentrated in a national 
assembly. Hamilton, who led the Federalists, had dif- 
ferent notions. He had no great respect for the people, 
it is true ; his faith had been shaken by the " Reign of 
Terror." He would have a people's government, but 
only when restrained by proper national checks ; and 



220 Pulpit and Platform. 

from that day to this the dividing line between political 
parties has been along the line relating to the relations 
of the States to the United States. Territorial consti- 
tutions and admissions to the Union, as also tariffs and 
protection, the more recent forms in which this question 
has appeared, are only differing forms of the old and first 
issue between the State and the Union, resulting then, 
as now, from the conflict between idealism and practical- 
ism or realism. 

Thus the nation began its history. It grew and flour- 
ished with unexampled vigor. In the North necessity 
was laid on men to toil. The sterility of the soil, the 
ruggedness of the hills, the severity of the climate com- 
pelled labor, and the North became practical, sober- 
minded, and undemonstrative. In the South the broad 
savannas and the fertility of the soil, together with en- 
ervating effects of the tropical sun, tempted to luxury 
and ease. These led to caste in society and to compel 
labor on the part of the poor, and the natural if not 
necessary result was aristocratic bearing, impatience of 
control, and delight in what was thought to be heroic 
and chivalric. Dueling settled private wrongs, and do- 
minion was the masterful spirit of society. The unem- 
ployed, if under no necessity to toil, are apt to conceive 
and indulge thoughts of superiority; and these things 
were reflected and exhibited in personal intercourse and 
set forth in congressional demeanor until they led to a 
state of things in which men from these latitudes really 
imagined that the toiling masses of the North were as 
inferior as the degraded slaves of their plantations, and 
the idea of empire and dominion took possession of 
them. A Confederacy was conceived by men in whom 
intuitional enthusiasm was dominant. The minds of the 



American National Character. 221 

practical and toiling North at once opposed this, at first 
in argument and afterward in arms. The hesitation to 
act at once by appeal to bayonets, which caused the 
South to believe that it was based on fear of their per- 
sonal prowess, proved to be the mere estimation of 
probabilities and a reluctance to imperil all that they 
held dear by plunging the land into civil war; but when 
the problem was intelligently solved it was practically 
demonstrated. 

So also in the readjustment of the issues of the conflict 
after victory, neither the extreme demands of justice 
nor the sentimental impulses of magnanimity were al- 
lowed full sway. The practical judgment of the people 
remembered the lesson while it lightened the burdens 
imposed. Clemency was pushed to the verge of weak- 
ness, and at one time there seemed almost a willing- 
ness on the part of those in power to abandon all the 
results of victory to the vanquished ; but the practical 
common sense of the people revolted, and denied to 
policy what the strength of the nation had refused to 
arms. Ballots made sure what bullets had made pos- 
sible, and ballots and bullets struck the same foe. The 
contest between enthusiasm and conservatism resulted 
in the salvation of the Union in its integrity. 

With the settlement of the question which involved 
the life of a nation a new difficulty appeared. The con- 
fidence of the people growing out of such an achieve- 
ment grew amazingly strong. Genuine pride in a great 
past bred overconfidence in a greater future. Each 
man felt that in securing a future for the country he had 
secured his own future. Hence, men began to live as 
though the future had already arrived ; we expanded as 
if we already possessed what we anticipated ; we traded 



222 Pulpit and Platform. 

on what was to be rather than on what existed. This 
was the time of inflated values and extravagant specula- 
tions; not as in the days of the South Sea Bubble or 
Law's Mississippi Scheme, existent or prospective, but 
on the prospective embracing of nonexistent values. 

But the good common sense of the people put away 
the theoretical expedients of the politicians and began 
to retrench expenses everywhere, at home and abroad, 
made close sales and close collections, calculated small 
margins, and thus assured the world of our ability and 
intention to meet our plighted faith and pay every cent 
of our vast national debt. And the result was that 
in fourteen years we began to redeem our greenback 
promises in golden coin. I feel persuaded that the 
manner in which the idealistic and conservative forces 
counterbalanced each other in the results of the panic 
of 1873-74 gives a better insight into our national char- 
acter than any other single event which, up to that time, 
had preceded it. It was as forcible and practical an ex- 
hibition of what we could do when necessity was laid 
upon us in financial matters as the victories of the field 
of war were a demonstration of what we could do in 
putting down a rebellion against united constitutional 
government. 

Another demonstration on the same line appears in 
the treatment of the vexed question between labor and 
capital which has surged over the land, affecting every 
interest and threatening every home. 

The last few years have given occasion for a wonderful 
exhibition of the balancing of these forces in our land. 
The condition of many of our working people was de- 
plorable. Grasping monopolists, greedy of gain, ground 
the faces of their employees; long hours were given to 



American National Character. 223 

toil and meager wages to toilers. Social distinctions 
began to multiply and be burdensome. A self-consti- 
tuted upper ten forgot the thousands whose work and 
wage made them. The unrequited found vent for their 
grievances in remonstrance, combinations, and at last in 
that un-American and foreign importation called the 
"strike." They were answered by invectives and lock- 
outs. The un-American idea that work was degrading 
was paralleled by the equally un-American idea of aris- 
tocracy and spoliation. That some magnates were un- 
just was made the pretext for asserting that all rule was 
injustice and all property-holding theft, all government 
tyranny. By combinations and unions wage-earners im- 
proved their conditions, shortened their hours of toil, 
advanced the rate of wages, and came to realize the 
blessing of living under a " government of the people, by 
the people, for the people." But when anarchists be- 
came blatant, asserted the right to abolish government 
and kill those employed to protect it, the common-sense 
judgment of the people was expressed in the verdict of 
a Chicago jury, and the whole nation was thereby re- 
assured. 

Still, the questions involved in the issues between 
capital and labor are not yet settled. Laborers have 
lost as well as gained by the contest ; they have lost 
the right of personal choice as for whom to work, 
what time to spend in labor, what wages to demand for 
labor, and, worse than all, have put themselves in such 
situation that honest industry cannot reap the rewards 
of diligence, but must share the damage from idleness 
and dissipation. They have given themselves over to 
another master, they are not their own master. There 
is hope for him in the achieved revolt of labor from im- 



224 Pulpit and Platform. 

perialism and outside dictation ; now let him assert him- 
self for himself, as lie has already asserted himself for his 
work, and the practical common sense of the people will 
applaud and sustain him. 

It will not, therefore, do to assert that a just and true 
balance of characteristic forces has as yet been realized 
among us; but I think that I have shown that in the 
history of the adoption of the Constitution, the adjust- 
ment of the rebellion and the panic, and the treatment 
of the labor problem there has been a very remarkable 
balance of these antagonistic forces — an adjustment that 
meets the common-sense approval of mankind. We 
have a national character ; it is not enthusiasm or mere 
utilitarianism, but a progressive conservatism, which 
holds to all that has been realized of good and reaches 
forth to all unrealized but attainable future results, 
never satisfied with the present, except so far as it in- 
cludes a possible future, the goal of to-day being always 
the starting-point for to-morrow. 

This common-sense adjustment of impending prob- 
lems, which results from the balancing of the distinctive 
forces which have entered into our national life, which 
shows the enthusiasm of progress and the carefulness of 
conservatism mutually counterbalancing each other, is 
the result of the forces thrown in upon us by the in- 
coming of foreign elements, in due proportion, and is 
the logical basis of our national character. The success 
that has attended the unification of these conflicting 
elements in the Americanization of them all is a wonder- 
ful tribute to the original power and force of the Anglo- 
Saxon original. Our fate depends on the variety as well 
as number of our immigrants. We are one people the 
continent over, under one law, speaking one language, 



American National Character. 225 

singing one song — and that law, that language, and that 
song is U-N-I-O-N. The Union means something to 
us all ; all the native-born recognize it, all the foreigners 
who come recognize it, all the other nations realize it. 
Germans may come, bringing their philosophy ; let them 
come. Frenchmen may come, bringing their art ; let 
them come. Italians may come, bringing their song ; 
let them come. Englishmen may come, bringing their 
conservatism ; let them come. Let all men come. 

And of all these diverse and sometimes antagonistic 
elements we will make a solvent for fusing our own 
sectional differences, and from the crucible of combina- 
tion there shall come forth 

" The union of lakes, the union of lands, 

A union of States none can sever ; 
A union of hearts, the union of hands, 

And the Flag of our Union forever ! " 

Looking upon the coming future, we anticipate the 
day when the mighty tide of population rolling eastward 
and westward shall, commingling, occupy the breadth 
of the continent; when, mindful of past blessings, they 
shall strive for peace and union ; when, instead of the 
clangor of war and the gleaming of arms, there shall rise 
to heaven the busy hum of industry and the waving 
richness of plenty. The attrition of differing origins and 
nationalities shall evolve a new and lofty type of charac- 
ter expressing that rare endowment of common sense, 
truthful in all emergencies, hopeful in all danger, secure 
and serene in all triumphs. The shifting scenes of a 
forming civilization shall give place to a consolidated 
nationality; the hardy and industrious, the ardent and 
impetuous, the energetic and daring men of all sections 
and nationalities, shall be linked in production and man u- 
15 



226 Pulpit and Platform. 

facture, by commerce and by cheap and swift communi- 
cation, and joined by the feeling of reciprocal fraternity. 
Equal rights and equal burdens will be equally distributed 
under one flag, on which the stripes shall symbolize the 
tears and blood which purchased the Union, and the 
stars the hopes which crown our destiny. 



THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 

A VISIT to Yosemite is an experience for a lifetime. 
Of the trip to it one has said, " It is the most diabolical 
journey out of Tartarus." But if you take sufficient 
time (as I did not), and do not hurry and overdo your- 
self (as I did), there is no part of the way which cannot 
be easily endured, while many parts of the route before 
you reach the valley are calculated to awaken sensations 
of grandeur and beauty. 

All the friends who accompanied me on this visit 
were conscious of peculiar impressions. We all realized 
somewhat of a strange and unreal presence, creating a 
condition of nervous excitement which was akin to ter- 
ror. We looked upon abrupt and rugged masses of dark 
gray rock, pushed up and casting their long black shad- 
ows across deep and apparently fathomless valleys. We 
saw solitary pines standing sentinel by what might have 
been giant graves ; we noted the feathery plumes of far- 
off cataracts, so distant that they fell noiselessly into 
the black depths of forests. The pungent and balsamic 
odors of pine forests soothed our senses ; the unconscious 
babble of mountain streams joined itself with murmurs 
of great piny oceans, and multitudinous voices continu- 
ally arose from the vast solitudes. Old mythical tradi- 
tions of dryads, nymphs, and sylvan deities came flood- 
ing the memory and arousing the imagination. We 
grew absorbed in nature and held converse with the 
cliffs and peaks and waterfalls. With reverent hands 



228 Pulpit and Platform. 

and cautious feet we climbed into the secret recesses of 
the mountain streams and watched their springs slide 
with hollow murmurs out of the black cavern of rocks; 
we scaled with painful labor ragged pinnacles and gazed 
on the dazzling surface of the clear cold snow fountains 
whence all these torrents glide into deep gorges, until, if 
the spirit of the mountains and forests had assumed bod- 
ily shape and audible speech, it would only have inten- 
sified an already existing unnaturalness. 

Of the two routes to the valley then practicable, the 
one by the Big Oak Flat and Harden's Mill was the 
cheaper, the shorter, the steeper, and the more uncom- 
fortable. We took it. Five and twenty miles of horse- 
back riding, as against six and thirty by the other route, 
was the consideration that determined us. We knew the 
exercise was healthful, but we also knew that we were 
unused to it. 

We took stages at Stockton, the head of navigation 
on the San Joaquin River, in the early morning, to pass 
through the San Joaquin valley and ascend the moun- 
tains. 

The valley was as hot and dry as the Sahara. During 
midsummer the trade winds blow from north to south 
with just sufficient force and regularity to keep the dust 
in, around, over, and under the stage all the way up the 
valley. California dust is a privileged institution. 
There being no rainfall nor dew during six months of 
each year, the surface of the ground becomes very dry, 
and the passing winds and busy feet of beasts and men 
grind it exceeding fine. There is no success in trying to 
avoid or to escape it. Clothes may be protected by 
overalls and by fastening rubber bands around the 
wrists and ankles, but it fills the eyes and stuffs the cars 



The Yosemite Valley. 229 

and crowds up the nose almost to suffocation. The ther- 
mometer indicated ninety degrees in the shade — wher- 
ever we found shade in which to mark it — and this, with 
the dust, was a plague. The horses at each step threw 
up the dust by bucketfuls, and must pause to breathe 
while the breeze drives the dust away. But as we ap- 
proach the summit, which is five thousand eight hundred 
feet above sea level, the views become enchanting. The 
successive peaks of the Sierras, with their wonderful ver- 
dure of pine and cypress trees, unfold themselves on the 
right and left in herculean grandeur. 

The sensation is different from that experienced in 
eastern hill climbing — the hills themselves are different. 
With us all valleys slope, all hilltops are rounded. In 
California all valleys are wedge-shapen ; all peaks are 
sharp and pointed, so that the name " Sierra " (saw) ex- 
presses the idea suggested by looking at a mountain 
range. The pines grow of enormous size ; the oaks 
looked like planted orchards ; we came often into full 
view of ravines and gulches appalling in depth, through 
which the full moon cast curious shadows, while it lighted 
them up with a strange, wild, barbaric glow. 

On reaching Harden's Mill we exchanged the stage- 
wagon in which we had come from Garrotte for horses — 
at least they called them so ; poor, overworked, and ill- 
treated beasts, but sure-footed and safe travelers. And 
though they would go on when we most wanted them to 
stop, and would stop with alarming suddenness when 
we wanted them to go on, yet we trusted ourselves to 
them, and our confidence was not altogether abused. 
They were curious things to look at, and more curious 
to watch in the queer tricks to which use had accus- 
tomed them. It was the habit of the euide to call a halt 



230 Pulpit and Platform. 

at any steep part of the route and u sinch " them, which 
simply means tightening the girths of the saddles. The 
moment we would dismount they would crane out their 
necks and swallow wind enough to double their ordinary 
dimensions, and as soon as the girth was tightened belch 
themselves into more normal proportions, leaving the 
girths swinging free inches below their proper position. 
They seemed to know just how many hours must be 
spent on the way as well as the way in which they 
should go. Entreaties, threats, waling, and jerks all 
failed to induce them to obey the travelers' will, and at 
last by giving up to them entirely they went on content. 
We had not ridden far before we came upon a grove 
of sugar pines, trees which were some of them twelve 
feet in diameter, and which grew straight as a line from 
eighty to one hundred feet before they threw out 
branches, which branches were often four feet in diam- 
eter and extended to the distance of forty feet, where 
they would be terminated by cones often two feet in 
length. Things of perfect beauty and strangely affecting 
us they were. These cones at such an elevation would 
be set in motion by each breath of passing wind. As 
they tossed high overhead they seemed like bells ringing 
out thanksgivings for the marvelous beauty with which 
they had been endowed. I never knew before what 
thought the Psalmist had in mind when he spoke of 
" the trees of the field clapping their hands." These 
trees are so many, and their beauty is so wonderful, and 
their dimensions are so grand, that we felt a sense of dis- 
appointment when we came to the Big Trees, as the 
Sequoia gigantca are termed. It is only by compari- 
son and measurement that they can be appreciated. 
But they are giants. One at Calaveras, which fell years 



The Yosemite Valley. 231 

before, and from which much had decayed, was thirty- 
three feet at the butt ; the center had decayed, and up 
to the time we saw it it had been a favorite pastime of 
the rural jehus to drive four-horse stages through the de- 
cayed two hundred and fifty feet and show their skill in 
emerging at the knot-hole made by the breaking off of 
a huge limb. Fourteen of us rode into the burnt- out 
cavity in the trunk of a dead tree, and there was room 
for us all. 

In the earlier days certain adventurers with an eye to 
speculation attempted to remove a section of one of the 
trees for exhibition. To get the tree down was their 
great difficulty, for the wood is so soft and spongy that 
axes could not be used, and the size so enormous that 
saws could not be thought of; but five of them spent 
twenty-two days in separating the stem from the stump 
by using pump augers, and the giant merely settled 
down to the extent of the diameter of the bores, but 
stood immovable. Ropes and chains were fastened to 
the branches at which men, mules, and oxen tugged in 
vain. A tree which grew toward it was felled that its 
weight might push, but still the monster stood firm. By 
using a derrick a huge beam was brought into play as a 
battering-ram, and while it thumped and the tree pressed 
its weight, and the men and mules pulled, at last a three 
days' effort was rewarded by extending on the ground 
a monarch of the forest who began his growth while 
Troy was yet besieged and the temple was building in 
Jerusalem. 

The surface of the stump was planed off, and with- 
out bark measured twenty-four feet one and a quarter 
inches in diameter, and as the bark had been eighteen 
inches thick the tree when standing must have been 



232 PULFIT AND PLATFORM. 

twenty-seven feet in diameter. There is now no tree 
more than three hundred and twenty-five feet high and 
none more than ninety-two feet seven inches in circum- 
ference. A pleasure-house has been built on the stump 
alluded to, and they offered if I would preach to put 
on it a table for Bible and hymn book, and seats for one 
hundred and forty-three worshipers, or, if we preferred to 
dance, they said they would place musicians, and yet 
leave room for thirty-two persons to dance ad libitum. 
They are thus seen to be singularly free from sectarian 
prejudice and bigotry ! 

One marvel concerning these big sequoias is excited 
by the knowledge that the cones which they produce 
are not large, like those of the sugar pine, and that the 
seeds in them are mere specks. How wonderful the 
power and skill by which such tiny germs are built up 
into such massive structures! 

" Rooted in barrenness, where naught below 
Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks 
Of eddying storms; yet springs trunk and mocks 
The howling tempest, till its height and frame 
Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks 
Of black-gray granite into life it came." 

After climbing hills all the long second day, until only 
here and there an isolated peak could be seen towering 
above us, just as the sun was sinking behind us, trailing 
his banner of tinted clouds along the west, and as the 
full-orbed moon appeared with silvery sheen in front 
of us, the guide called out, " Yosemite ! " We having 
started to reach a valley, and having now for two days 
been ascending mountains, supposed for a while that this 
was another of the practical jokes by which he was 
attempting to beguile the weariness of the way. We 



The Yosemite Valley. 233 

dismounted and found ourselves standing among vast 
masses of rock, entangled with a thick undergrowth of 
shrubs, and, obediently taking the guide's hand and step- 
ping a few paces forward, looked over an abrupt edge 
of rock and saw thousands of feet beneath us a lovely 
sylvan plain, carpeted with vivid green, divided by a 
winding stream which lay like a girdle of pearls in the 
lap of the valley. The cliff which overlooked it was 
sheer, and all the walls which we could see rose also 
straight up from the valley, while here and there from 
off their peaks the waterfalls seemed to float like pen- 
nons in the air. To the left a gray slope, like a solidi- 
fied avalanche, swept steeply down. Beyond a huge 
columnar mass of rock rose like a watchtower toward 
the sky. Half down the vista rose peak above peak, as 
though peering curiously at the presumptuous travelers, 
and far away a sphinx-like shape lifted its awful head in 
the clear distance, and its huge eye seemed to watch 
with more than human expression over the vale which 
stretched its sinuous course along from the portal on 
which we stood. The wall of the valley over against us 
was broken into towering peaks and truncated spires, 
of which two square tapering masses rose a thousand 
feet high in the air, like the Gothic towers of some gray 
old cathedral. As the combined effect of setting sun 
and rising moon now gilded and now silvered the facade 
of this seeming structure we looked, but of course in 
vain, for stony saints, martyrs, and apostles, silent and 
statuesque. 

We summon our remaining strength and courage for 
the perilous descent. We have been riding for six and 
thirty hours, with only the few hours of rest at Garrotte, 
and are nervously timid. A rugged trail carries us down 



234 Pulpit and Platform. 

the three thousand feet by zigzagging along the moun- 
tain side for about four miles. A slip of the horse would 
imperil life. We lost the aid of daylight as we began to 
descend ; the moonlight was often obscured by the 
growth of trees and shrubs; shouts from the leaders of 
the party to " close up in the rear" were faintly re- 
sponded to by the laggards, and as we entered into and 
emerged from black passages and found ourselves on 
slippery rocks, where the horses gathered their feet be- 
neath them and slid down the steep declivity, it at last 
caused such a feeling of revulsion and despair that I 
gave up the attempt to ride, and, dismounting, followed 
my tired steed feeling as dejected as he certainly looked. 
I had noticed a metamorphosis a few minutes before 
alighting which helped to decide me on that expedient, 
for as we entered a black portion of the trail I saw (or 
thought I saw) that my horse had four ears instead of 
two. I mentally reasoned, " If this thing goes on, and 
this is the case halfway down, what shall I be riding when 
we get to the bottom ?" On coming out into the moon- 
light I found that while I was sitting straight up the 
horse was going so straight down that my boots were 
parallel with his ears and had been mistaken for an ab- 
normal growth ! I was content thereafter to walk. 

At last we reached the level ground. The beautiful 
Merced was gliding peacefully beneath our feet and 
Totoconula was towering heavenward above us. To- 
toconula (El Capitain) is a cliff of solid granite with- 
out a seam, rising perpendicularly from the meadow 
three thousand three hundred feet. The valley is nar- 
rower than the height of this cliff, so that if Totoconula 
were to be toppled by a convulsion he would rest his 
peak upon the confronting wall. The base line along 



The Yosemite Valley. 235 

the valley is a mile, and the recedence from the valley a 
half mile; and this bold front, unscanned and almost un- 
scarred, is thrown out from the hillside, and becomes 
the great guardian and protector of the valley, of which 
it is one of the chief ornaments and wonders, " an 
awful form rising from forth a silent sea of pines." 

The valley into which we have entered is a gorge in 
the Sierra Nevada range about midway between the 
northern and eastern extremities. It lies at right angles 
to the general trend of the mountains. It is from six to 
seven miles long and from half a mile to a mile wide, 
and the edges, or sides, are from half a mile to a mile 
high. These walls are, in most cases, perpendicular; in 
others slightly inclined, but broken into every variety 
of form. 

Of the valley as a whole no words can make adequate 
description. It is a new thing in nature, and can be 
compared with nothing but itself. It is as unlike the 
other valleys in California as they are unlike the valleys 
of the East. To see it is to be convinced of the correct- 
ness of the strange theory of Professor J. D. Whitney. 
It is apparent at a glance that no convulsion ever rent 
the mountain apart and sundered the hills, for there is 
no correspondence or brotherhood between the spurs 
or canyons on either side. The river cannot have worn 
the mountain away, for it escapes by so narrow a fissure 
that a man may not press his way through it. Nothing 
of this sort will answer by way of explanation. The 
only possible conclusion is that the crust of the earth 
was not strong enough to support the superincumbent 
mass of gneiss and granite heaped upon it by some 
volcanic eruption, and, giving way under the pressure, 
half of everything dropped down some thousands of 



236 Pulpit and Platform. 

feet into the earth, to make an everlasting delight and 
mystery. 

This would be a marvelous thing even if it were in a 
plain or a prairie, but the Yosemite is in the wild heights 
and rocky fastnesses of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 
The bottom or floor of the valley is four thousand feet 
above the level of the sea. The mere suggestion of 
such a possibility awakens awe ; the fact of its existence 
is a more wonderful thing than the imagination of man 
has conceived. 

And yet with all this grandeur there is much of quiet 
beauty. There are about eleven hundred acres of land 
on the floor of this valley, and the verdure extends in 
most places to the base of the walls ; there is very little 
debris, and what there is seems to have fallen from the 
still standing cliffs. The meadow lands support a vege- 
tation of pine, cedar, and oaks. The California laurel, 
the Oregon maple, and the mountain live oaks abound. 
On the ground are ice plants, wild berries, brakes, ferns, 
and mosses. In clumps in great profusion are wild 
roses, wild azaleas, and the great white lilies of the 
Sierras. The green sward of the meadow through which 
the waters of the Merced glide affords a strong contrast 
to the gray walls of the cliffs; but while there is no lack 
of color the general tone is somber and not gay. The 
intense brilliancy of some pictures which assume to 
represent the valley is idealized ; the immense height of 
the walls and the narrowness of the gorge prevent a flood 
of bright light or of gay coloring. No artist can repre- 
sent these heights on canvas; no camera can reproduce 
them for the photographer; no words can so describe 
them that other eyes than the beholder's can see their mar- 
velous beauty and comprehend their enormous majesty. 



The Yosemite Valley. 237 

The valley was discovered in the spring of 185 1 by 
United States soldiers who were in pursuit of Indians. 
In the next year the Indians were nearly exterminated ; 
but, unfortunately, with them we lost the Indian names, 
which, being condensed descriptions, were resonant and 
short, while those which have been substituted for them 
are tame and meaningless and ought not to be perpet- 
uated. 

When we were about halfway in our descent into the 
valley (about where I dismounted) and the light sufficed 
we should have enjoyed the best view of the Bridal Veil 
Fall, called by the Indians " Pohono " (the spirit of the 
winds). It is not one of the great falls of the valley, but 
in some respects it is the most beautiful. The water 
comes over the lip of the cliff, descending perpendicu- 
larly six hundred feet and breaking into cascades for three 
hundred feet more over the rocks which underlie it. It 
has no element of sublimity or grandeur; it is simply 
and ravishingly beautiful. The jubilant wind plays with 
it as if it were a falling fold of the rarest and whitest lace, 
and ofttimes the lower half of the great cliff seems 
hung with a wide stretch of brilliant rainbows. The 
winds vary with the hours, and the veil tosses in the 
winds. In early morning the sheet of water comes 
down with a joyous airiness infinitely charming; at noon 
the breeze will catch it and mold it into ten thousand 
lovely, graceful forms, now swaying it from side to side 
slowly, as with the even sweep of a long pendulum, now 
breaking it into millions of dazzling crystals, now twisting 
it into falling waves sparkling with splendor, now dividing 
it into differing streamlets which are afterward folded 
quickly together and dropped with tenderest good will 
and reluctant release into the shadow of the rocks below* 



238 Pulpit and Platform. 

The valley takes its name Yosemite, which means 
" great grizzly," from a cataract fed by the melting 
snows of the Mount Hoffman group, which comes down 
in a stream of variable width over a cliff two thousand 
six hundred and forty-one feet high. The cliff of the 
Niagara Falls is one hundred and eighty-two feet high, 
so that this cataract is fourteen times higher than Ni- 
agara. The plunge of the water is, however, taken in 
two leaps, separated by a cascade of six hundred and 
forty-one feet. The lower fall is nine hundred feet, and 
the upper or main fall sixteen hundred feet. These two 
plunges and the intervening cascades are so placed with 
reference to the valley that they appear as one white 
sheet of falling splendor when viewed anywhere within a 
distance of two miles. You are never tired of looking at 
it. As the eyes of a portrait on a wall fascinate a child 
who is a stranger in the room, by seeming to follow him 
and rest directly upon him wherever he may move, so is 
it with this fall ; stand a half mile below or a mile and a 
half above it, and anywhere in that stretch of the valley 
it is squarely before you. It waits on your footsteps 
like an obedient creature, or rather like a spirit which 
compels you to bow in profound and mute admiration. 
There have been hours in which it seemed to me as if it 
were a living thing. You cannot get away from it. 
Look out from your lodging in the early morning, and 
there it is ; peer from the shade in which you rest at 
noon, and there its grandeur waits ; wake in the night, 
and as you gaze it is vibrating tantalizingly in the white 
moonlight ; or if you shut your eyes you will still see it 
and feel it dashing down its dizzy height into your heart. 

As the wind catches the long column of sixteen hun- 
dred feet it drives it into lines and waves of motion, 



The Yosemite Valley. 239 

constantly changing, but always beautiful. So long is 
the fall that the water sometimes appears to be blown 
into vapor midway in its descent, but gathers together 
again below, as though a long white satin ribbon had 
been flossed midway between its ends. The rock back 
of it is nine hundred feet wide, and the white satin rib- 
bon is swept by the wind every way across it, sometimes 
appearing as a sheet of downward-flying, hissing snow 
rockets, dashing into an ever-rising cloud of spray and 
mist, and then again peacefully unfolding in arrowy and 
fluted tracery of pearly whiteness against the dark face 
of the rock. The rocks on which it grinds itself to foam 
in passing hem it in closely for the short, rough passage, 
till, as though maddened by restraint, it leaps out into 
the sunny valley beneath and thunders with incessant 
tumult down the awful steep. Falling almost noise- 
lessly from above, it chafes and frets in the cascade; and 
finally smites the air with haughty blows of sound when 
at last set free. 

You may climb up the tortuous way across the rugged 
face of the precipice to the foot of the upper or main 
fall. When there you are a thousand feet above the 
valley. If you look down, the river Merced flows quietly 
beneath ; all is fair and peaceful ; the warm air is bur- 
dened with the heat and odors of midsummer ; the trees 
point motionless toward the cloudless sky. If you look 
up, as though from out of heaven, the changeful splen- 
dors of the fall descend with brightening glory. Look 
now behind the fall into the dark recess ; the sunlight 
is obscured by vapors ; the air, chilled with moisture, 
shrieks with unnatural sobs and sighs that come one 
knows not whence, and are driven by strange gusts one 
knows not whither ; for these are seemingly wintry w T inds 



240 Pulpit and Platform. 

that sweep and circle in the dark abyss into which the 
thundering water continually pours. 

" More like the fountain of an infant sea 

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes 

Of a new world, than only thus to be 

Parent of rivers which flow gushingly 

With many windings through the vale." 

A Mr. Hutchins, who was among the early visitors to 
this most celebrated natural curiosity, and who wrote 
and published the first authentic description of its 
beauties, located himself under the provisions of the 
homestead law in a spot whence many of the attractions 
of the valley may be seen at one view. He erected him- 
self a home, bringing the necessary materials over the 
long stretch of the Sierras and down the rocky and pre- 
cipitous trails on mules and mustangs. The boards with 
which his house was to be built could be no longer than 
might be strapped upon the sides of a pack mule, and 
hence the house so constructed looks as though it had 
been weather-boarded with barrel staves. His claim to 
possession was resisted by the State of California, and he 
was ultimately dispossessed of the freehold by a special 
act of the United States Congress, which set apart the 
valley and the adjacent groves of Big Trees to be re- 
served in perpetuity as national pleasure grounds. He 
opened his house for the accommodation of travelers, 
and was the first to entertain guests who, in increasing 
numbers, arc each year visiting this wonderland. 'We 
reached his house in the evening, after a long day's ride, 
so tired that it seemed to us that we never could be 
rested; so bruised it seemed we never could be healed; 
we were so jammed by pack saddles upward, and by 
rocks, against which we had tumbled, sideward and 



The Yosemite Valley. 241 

downward, that it seemed as though restoration were 
an impossibility. When our jaded beasts neighed in 
response to the whinnying of their comrades, lariated 
within the corral in front of his hotel, it was like a " call 
from labor to refreshment." Most of us needed help to 
dismount from our ridiculous steeds, and we were in such 
a state of mingled dirt and debility that no thought 
occurred of questioning the probable quality of our ac- 
commodations ; the mere idea of rest was, in itself, a 
blessing. But we were hospitably received and gener- 
ously fed, and then shown to our night quarters, whose 
peculiar construction suggested the perfect security of 
the location ; no bolts were needed and no place for bolts 
was found. The frames for the doors were of narrow 
lathing, and the partitions for the rooms were covered 
with white " domestic " sheeting. Each one had his 
separate room and his own particular candle, and those 
who extinguished their lights first had the most fun, 
while the fatigues of the day were, for a moment, for- 
gotten as we enjoyed the curious shadow pantomime and 
grotesque display made by our neighbors, who consumed 
more time in disrobing for the night. There was laugh- 
ter that sounded too much like that we hear at lunatic 
asylums ; it was an irrepressible shriek of merriment 
from thoroughly exhausted and nervously prostrated 
individuals. 

We were lulled to sleep by the sounding beats of the 
great waterfall, whose beauty we had not yet seen, but 
went to our rest with the conviction that if we survived 
that day's fatigue we might, thereafter, boldly under- 
take whatever fate might offer. 

The attentive host and the overworked but kind- 
hearted hostess, though sometimes almost driven to 
16 



242 Pulpit and Platform. 

desperation by the unreasonable demands of their other 
guests, made every exertion for our comfort and supplied 
the table generously with venison from the mountains, 
mutton from the hills, trout from the Merced, vegetables 
in ample quantity and of such quality as California 
alone produces. The morning dawned, and with many a 
groan and other indications of fatigue we stretched our 
weary limbs and assembled at the board to arrange our 
plans for the day. I was unable to go any distance from 
the house, and spent the day looking at the distant falls 
and watching, with curious interest, the shaggy and un- 
kempt mustangs who had been turned out to graze on 
the rich herbage of the valley. They are not fed by the 
guides, who have a firm belief that attention to these 
animals kills them. I saw our guide inspecting with 
unusual interest the beast I had used. He was a striking 
picture of despair. His head drooped to the level of his 
knees in front, and his tail was wedged so closely in 
behind that he seemed to have lost that caudal ap- 
pendage. George jerked his head up and nugged his 
side with his knee, and simply said, " Old fellow, whose 
been a-feedin' you ? " 

Two miles above the location of Mr. Hutchins's house 
the valley divides into three parts, through which the 
Tenaya, the Merced, and the Illiloute Rivers flow. The 
highest rocks hem in the Tenaya, the grandest falls arc 
of the Merced ; the Illiloute we did not visit. 

Quite within view of the house are some of the natu- 
ral wonders, among them To-ko-ya, or the North Dome, 
which, as its name implies, is a cupola-like rock of smooth 
granite of colossal proportions. It rests on the very 
verge of the valley. It is nearly four thousand feet high, 
and the peak on the north side of the chasm is perfectly 



The Yosemite Valley. 243 

symmetrical. It is buttressed or supported by royal 
arches, which compose a semicircular cavern truly 
arched, with the east end resting against Hunto or 
Washington's Column, the whole presenting the appear- 
ance of vast masonry, Cyclopean in its proportions, as 
though planned to support the dome above. When men 
stand beneath the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, which 
is four hundred feet high, they are awed by its vastness, 
and they wonder at the gift of genius bestowed on An- 
gelo which enabled him to plan it. In comparison with 
this North Dome St. Peter's is as a block house built 
by playing children upon a nursery floor. Comparisons, 
however, should not be instituted between the architec- 
ture of the Almighty and the structures of his creatures. 
This gray granite fashioned into palaces, crowned with 
its dome, fills the imagination and allows no room for 
further exercise but by an outgoing beyond the hill- 
sides into the overhanging skies and picturing celestial 
cities. The soul stands in awe before this revelation of 
omnipotence. You feel that this is God's work. Eter- 
nal power alone could cleave that chasm, rive the rock, 
and rear that dome. Opposite the North is the Half 
Dome, called by the Indians " Tis-a-yac " (the goddess of 
the valley), overlooking the North Dome by more than a 
thousand feet. Nearly a mile high, the upper two thou- 
sand feet appear perfectly vertical, so that a plumb line 
from the upper cliff would apparently lie evenly along 
the whole face of the rock. It presents the clearage 
directly to the valley as though some mighty blade had 
fallen with thunderous power on the bald head of the 
aspiring giant peak and the blow had cleft him to the 
shoulder blade. Seen by moonlight, its prodigious mass 
and corrugated surface are brought out in full grandeur, 



244 Pulpit and Platform. 

and the sensations they awaken are as near akin to the 
infinite as man may know. 

Beyond these — and these but rarely reached by travel- 
ers — rose the Clouds' Rest, ten thousand feet above sea 
level, suggesting the possibility of reaching the skies as 
its tall form uplifts itself above the clouds. 

"All that expands the spirit, yet appalls, 
Gathers around the summits, as to show 

How earth may pierce to heaven, 
Yet leave vain man below." 

Just at the foot of the North Dome there is a spot of 
quiet beauty which for exquisite loveliness has no equal 
in the world. The river expands into a lake, which re- 
flects in its clear cold depths the matchless mountains 
which encircle it. Shut in from the action of the winds, 
its placid surface is unruffled by the breeze. The six 
thousand feet of the edge of the North Dome become 
twelve thousand as we trace the outline from the crest 
down to and then into the lake, while every seam and 
scar is reproduced with marvelous exactness and fidelity. 
In the reversed picture the firs and pines seem to grow 
downward, and the eye is puzzled and perplexed in the 
labyrinth of verdure to detect the line which separates 
the hill from the reflection. We are amazed, bewil- 
dered, ravished 

" with its crystal face, 
The mirrors where the stars and mountains view 
The stillness of their aspect in each trace 
Its clear depths yield of their fair height and hue.' 

Unbroken silence reigns in this solitude ; we turn 
away reluctantly, believing that art may not rival, nature 
cannot surpass it. It lingers in the memory like a beni- 



The Yosemite Valley. 245 

son, and it seemed a fitting type of the glory which is to 
be revealed. 

On Sunday morning, August 1, 1869, I rose earlier 
than my companions, and, taking a horse from the corral, 
rode out to see the effect of the sunrise upon this Eden. 
I have worshiped God in the poor quarters of the 
wretched slaves, in the rude huts of our frontiers, in the 
more stately edifices of our cities, and in grand cathe- 
drals and historic minsters of the Old World, but no 
one service of them all stands out so clearly as having 
brought me face to face with God. I reached the lake in 
the gray light of early dawn, lifting my eyes in medita- 
tion and prayer. I saw the sun's first rays rest on the 
Dome in benediction. " The moon, with breath all in- 
cense and with cheek all bloom," was kissing the dew- 
damp from the giant's brow. I looked below and saw 
the crystal waters lighted with a glory not their own ; 
pale pink and crimson hues were tinting the depths, rich 
purple flashes revealed themselves, and soon the golden 
glory of the sun flashed light into the darkness. With 
head uncovered and with heart overfull, I could think 
only of apocalyptic visions, and of the "sea of glass min- 
gled with fire " on which the redeemed are to stand when 
they harp with the harps of God. 

We recover from our fatigue, arrange our plans, and 
start out to trace up the path by which the Merced River 
makes its way into the valley. The distance is not more 
than three linear miles, but the water descends two thou- 
sand feet in running it, and forms falls, cascades, and every 
conceivable variety of rapids and lakelets. We start on 
horseback with a pack mule carrying our impedimenta, 
Avhich consists of lunch baskets, waterproof clothing, and 
such matters as mav be needed in case of accidents. 



246 Pulpit and Platform. 

The river sweeps placidly through the level meadows, 
and its waters are clear and translucent, revealing many 
a glimpse of pebbly bottom or of deep wells wherein 
the flash of the trout might be seen as he rose for the 
fly upon the surface. As we ascend the stream begins 
to roar and tremble, and the rugged and dizzy hills close 
in around us. The horses pick their way carefully 
among the rocks; climb, dive, dip, and twist themselves 
around the bowlders which have been swirled by the 
spring floods from out their last year's graves. Some- 
times they lie so closely wedged together that to pass 
between them seems impossible ; but the sagacious beasts 
have taken thinner persons through, and so you must 
make experiment, and you can know your exact dimen- 
sions by measuring the space, if attention to your 
wounds and bruises does not wholly engross your time ! 

We leave our horses in the keeping of an enterprising 
youth who has erected a refreshment booth at the end 
of the bridle path, and after ascending a half mile we 
come into the spray of the Vernal Falls. The ground is 
wet and slippery; the rocks are dripping with moisture; 
we must move with caution, for a fall would be most 
perilous. Rounding a promontory of rocks, we enter 
the dell of the falls. The water comes down four or five 
hundred feet, and its rush occasions a vibration of the 
air over the pool and drives the spray into the hillsides 
and covers all things with the beautiful but evanescent 
tints of purple, yellow, scarlet, while it moistens the 
gray granite with manifold rainbow scuds. 

Looking up to see the water, it justifies its Indian 
name, " Pic-way-ack " (sparkling water). It looks as 
though all the gems of the earth had been gathered and 
rolled out of bounty's hand. It is a cataract of diamonds 



The Yosemite Valley. 247 

and rubies. You look up again, and the waterfall seems 
to flow from out a cloud of white fleecy wool or snow, 
which is the condensed vapor which has risen to the 
upper air. You look again, and above the cloud you 
see beautiful stripes of white and green, in which garni- 
ture the water chooses to leap from the upper level. As 
you turn to exchange greetings with your companions 
they seem to be clothed with rainbows, and from the 
spot whereon you stand all round the rim of the deep 
pool there floats that curious and rare phenomenon, a 
circular rainbow, which seems almost alive by reason of 
the tremulously floating spray. 

We make our way up the slope, soggy with moisture, 
drenched with vapor, pursued by the shrieking, blinding 
wind, that whirls up the canyon, until we reach the wall 
of the falls. Then we must scale the rock face by mount- 
ing ladders. When we reach the top we find a natu- 
ral parapet, breast-high, from which we view the w r ater 
plunging, whiter than milk, with broad stripes of apple 
green, shooting innumerable rockets as it falls two and a 
half times deeper than Niagara, through the corrusca- 
tions of beauty with which the sun flecks it, until it 
drops boiling and seething at the bottom, as though the 
fires of another world were concentrated beneath it. 

" Then mounts in spray the skies, 
And thence again returns in an unceasing shower, 
Which round with its unemptied cloud of gentle rain 
Is an eternal April to the ground, making 
It all one emerald." 

Turning to look beyond us, we observe a little lake 
formed by the enlargement of the river, which seems as 
though it were a resting-place where the tired waters 
might gather strength before they took the plunge. 



248 Pultit and Platform, 

Around it stand, as though on guard to shelter them, 
the tall straight forms of pines and firs whose trunks are 
ringed with yellow, greenish moss. But further on we 
catch a glimpse of the greater cataract, and leaving this 
embodiment of peace and quietness we hasten forward. 
But we must pause, if it be only for a moment, to note 
the water sweeping in the arc of a great circle, over an 
apparently smooth rock, whose inclination is such that 
each drop of water seems to be parted from its com- 
panions and to roll separately, that the sun may trans- 
form it into a gem, which, intoxicated with its own sense 
of beauty, " leaps with delirious bound." Nothing can 
be more beautiful. 

But soon the river narrows, the rocks close up, but 
fifteen feet are left through which the whole volume of 
the stream must pass. Mounting the safe, rude bridge 
which spans this narrow channel, we see the agony of 
the water as in three mighty bursts which seem to 
throw it bodily into the air it precipitates itself against 
the black and jagged rocks, " forever shattered, yet the 
same forever." There is probably no stream of water in 
the world that does so much smashing and gets so thor- 
oughly smashed in the space of two miles as does the 
Merced. 

The path on the south side now takes us some dis- 
tance from the stream ; it is rough walking, but the view 
of the Nevada Fall is said to overpay one for all fatigues. 
And truly when we reach it we know why the Indians 
called it "Yo-wi-ye" (twisted water), for it does not de- 
scend perpendicularly, but with many a curve. It comes 
over the precipice entirely white, and after a brief de- 
scent strikes a ledge of rocks hidden from view, which, 
deflecting to the right, expands it into double the width 



The Yosemite Valley. 249 

it had above. From this point it comes down in millions 
of white rockets and jets three hundred and fifty feet, 
where another hidden ledge catches that portion which 
is nearest the rocks and throws it up and out through 
the main sheet of foam, lifting its crest in sudden sur- 
prise, as the angry archangels of Milton do ; then, dart- 
ing down two hundred and fifty feet further, it strikes the 
water below at such an angle and with such a force that 
the whole column, instead of mingling with its kindred 
element, ricochets with the velocity of a cannon ball a 
distance of fifty feet or more, where, striking a cordon of 
rocks, it is quieted at last. 

This twisted water has no rival ; it lacks somewhat of 
impressiveness from the fact that there is so little depth 
behind the falling flood; but in your recollection of it 
there come as adjuncts of its glory the wild, precipitous 
pass near by ; at the left, the Titanic mass of rocks, 
further away, solid, isolated, almost perpendicular, rising 
two thousand feet into the " Cap of Liberty." On the 
right stands the rock-ribbed slope a thousand feet above 
the fall, so distant that enormous pines growing upon 
the gray declivity look like mere shrubs. 

In springtime, they tell us, the whole canyon is filled 
with blinding spray, but in midsummer you can lie 
on the rocks, as we did, a few rods from the base and 
watch the fall, following out the fantastic tricks which are 
played with the descending water, until its roar seems to 
modulate into a murmur and you sink into forgetful- 
ness. And then come fancies which in your dreamy 
ruminations shape themselves into the fashion of old 
myths and legends, and you begin to wonder whether 
this was always as beautiful as now; how long these 
beauties lingered before man saw them, known only to 



250 Pulpit and Platform. 

the circling eagle in the cloud or to the hissing serpent 
in the grass. You become curious to know if the rock 
now covered by the fall was ever dry and looked just 
like the other granite faces that shut in the chasm, and, 
if this be so, whether the virgin waters when first set free 
from their imprisoning snow fetters were not affrighted 
as, after joyously rippling in harmonious measure, they 
came down to the edge of this great cliff. And if you 
really dream you may see them start back as though 
unwilling to achieve their destiny at such great risk, 
when, lo ! there rises in your fancy the ruler of the 
realm, who, to encourage them, bids his angel lead the 
way. With form of peerless beauty the messenger, 
pausing but an instant to divest himself of his rainbow 
robe, glides down the steep, and the glad waters, know- 
ing no more fear, catch up his robe, and, waving it in 
gladness, are swift to follow ; and you fancy that ever 
since that tinted banner has been borne over them in 
grateful recognition of their guide! 

So much for dreams, so much for visions. But your 
waking thoughts are not of sprites or nymphs, but of 
Him who laid his hand upon these granite hills and so 
depressed them ; who carpeted the valley with its emer- 
ald green and studded it with flowers ; who gave the 
waterfalls their dash, their fury, their unceasing power 
and foam ; who gave them rest in quiet nooks to mirror 
his own goodness ; who hemmed these treasures of 
beauty in with rocks unscalable, affirming by his signet 
that " in his hand are the deep places of the earth ; the 
strength of the hills is his also." 

" Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts ! 

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 

Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 



The Yosemite Valley. 25 

Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers 
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet? 
"God !" let the torrents, like the shout of nations, 
Answer ; and let the ice plains echo — " God ! " 

Thou, too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks, 

That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 

In adoration, upward from thy base 

Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, 

Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, 

To rise before me — rise, O ever rise, 

Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth ! 

Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, 

Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven 

Great Hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky, 

And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God." 



THE END. 












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